An old stone-breaker, 70 years of age, known as "Growler" and "the Duke," was lately found dead upon his pile, near Elane (Vic.). He still held his hammer in his hand, and appeared to have fallen whilst at work. He had been breaking stones for 30 years in the South:-

To Growler let me gage my gracious verse
   And poetise a played-out pioneer,
Despite my hero's dire decuple curse
   And base, prosaic appetite for beer.


Perchance a "broker" with a vandal flavour
   Of beer and "toby," and a sun-tanned hide,
Is no fit client for the Muses' favour
   Their ladyships have donned a world of "side"


Since yielding to the poets who inveigle
   The Nine to give performances at Court,
According to comands nem. con. and regal -
   As Maids-in-Waiting to the Queen in short;


But though Calliope look cold and scornful,
   And hold my subject commonplace and cheap,
I find a touch magnificent and mournful
   In Growler dying on his "ducal" heap.


The "kanpper" in sarcastic moods would swear he
   A "diamond-cutter" was, "expert in stone,"
A "two-inch mason," or a "lapidary,"
   To me the joke lacked pith and point I own -


"The Duke" worked sqaure, and broke his rock to measure,
   He never built his pile upon a log;
If use had weight like ornament and pleasure,
   Old "Broker Pete" would head the catalogue.


I ne'er admired his facial expression -
   His nose was sprung and shifted to the right,
And, like a number in the same "profession,"
   One eye was gone from its unsightly site.


His hair was thin and grizzled, and his figure
   Was bent and shrunken like a buckled gum,
But, spite regretted years of toil and rigour,
   He looked as tough and good for years to come.


When slogging sprawls on his metallic hill he
   Came sometimes pretty close to calm content -
A taste of "tangle" in the blackened billy,
   No danger of the "damn Benevolent."


'Neath canvas was the growler's great ambition
   To live his life, asylums he abhorred;
His six-by-eight, with rug and "ammunition,"
   To him was quite Elysian bed and board.


The sobriquet he bore was fit and proper -
   That knapper's not the best of friends with fate
Who's seen the prices come a painful cropper
   From twelve-and-six a yard to two-and-eight.


The strongest point was national retrogression,
   This brag about the country's wond'rous "go"
Made growler's language leave a warm impression
  And odours of that lurid place below.


He swore the land was wending ways infernal,
   And proved his proposition through and through,
The argument ran hourly or diurnal -
   He got ten bob a yard in '62.


The towns are full of rogues in fancy raiment,
   Who get big screws to rob and do the Block,
Whilst honest fellows for the paltry payment
   Of one-and-nine are crushing four-inch rock.


This plan of running up a stable nation
   Gave Pete his grievance, he was wont to snort:
"Who'd build a house t' crush its own foundation?"
   With ornamental oaths not used in court.


Tho' poorer than his means was growler's knowledge,
   He had that problem's measure to an inch -
It seldom takes a lengthy term at college
   To teach a fellow where his bulchers pinch.


Full threescore years and ten had silver-crowned him,
   When Pete fell stoic-like to his last sleep;
And after sixty years of toil they found him
   Still napping on his desolated heap.


No more th emetal chips wil fly before him,
   His hammers ring along the roads no more,
The mirage mists may glance and glimmer o'er him,
   His toilings and his thirstings now are o'er.


They summed deceased's estate up to the letter:
   Tents, blankets, billy, trousers, boots and socks -
Our Yankee friends appreciate much better
   The man who leaves his heirs a "pile of rocks."


Alas! we lack the soul of veneration!
   Where be the songs of praise, the sobbing odes,
The sapphic sadness of the favoured nation
   Bequeathed a noble heritage of roads?


If there be virtues still in honest labour -
   And sure there be - the Growler had some grace
(I don't foerget his language, chokered neighbour)
   And finds a meed of favour and of pace.


Vale, Growler, vale, the Powers are all-forgiving,
   I deem it well you've jerked the weary job,
There's little joy in labouring and living
   To see the prices fall another bob.

"Edward Dyson"
The Bulletin, 16 November 1889, p19