This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;
There’s money to burn in the streets to-night, so I’ve sent my
klooch to town,
With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.

And I know at the dawn she’ll come reeling home with the bottles,
one, two, three;
One for herself to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me,
To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.

To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous
place;
To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady’s face,
Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.

Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak
In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, ’mid the ranch-house filth
and reek,
I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase, and rise with a verse of
Greek?

Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;
Called to the bar my friends were true! but they could not keep me
straight;
Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and “died” on the River Plate.

But I’m not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn’t time to
spare,
And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one
will care
Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her
hair.

She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its
evil glow,
Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want
and woe;
And yonder she comes, by the bleak bull-pines, swift staggering
through the snow.