What the Overseer Told Me.
130
Like a black hissing serpent devouring the still summer landscape it came
With a quick blaze of sparks redly showering, and its copper crest shining like flame.
And then, when it suddenly whistled,—a short, sharp, shrill, echoing scream—
Poor Billy 's hair actually bristled, I saw his white teeth all agleam,
He seized his thick wattle-tree waddy, his eyes seemed to start from his head,
A quiver ran right through his body, as he turned to Marquita and said,
"Yah! seeum, one big Debbil-Debbil! No catch you, me kill um," and then
With a shout in his quavering treble, and before we could even count ten,
He had leapt down the rails and was springing in frenzied assault on the train,
A faint thud—a slight clog in its swinging—then it swept on untrammelled again.
Ah, poor little Billy! for ever cut off by the passionless force
Of great iron wheels that can never know pity, nor touch of remorse.
With a quick blaze of sparks redly showering, and its copper crest shining like flame.
And then, when it suddenly whistled,—a short, sharp, shrill, echoing scream—
Poor Billy 's hair actually bristled, I saw his white teeth all agleam,
He seized his thick wattle-tree waddy, his eyes seemed to start from his head,
A quiver ran right through his body, as he turned to Marquita and said,
"Yah! seeum, one big Debbil-Debbil! No catch you, me kill um," and then
With a shout in his quavering treble, and before we could even count ten,
He had leapt down the rails and was springing in frenzied assault on the train,
A faint thud—a slight clog in its swinging—then it swept on untrammelled again.
Ah, poor little Billy! for ever cut off by the passionless force
Of great iron wheels that can never know pity, nor touch of remorse.
