Drinking Song of a Moth

Orchardists in the Strathfieldsaye and Harcourt fruit districts, near Bendigo, have discovered that, of all fluids experimented with, “pinkie” is the best for luring codlin moths. The wine attracts these apple pests in great numbers; then the deadly poison spray deals out certain death.

I met a moth,
A codlin moth,
A philosophic moth,
Blowing the froth
From a beer in a country pub.
Said the moth: “I sprang from a lowly grub;
At my beginning and my end alike
Bitter frustration ever looms to strike.
Hope’s joyous cup aside. All sober mirth
Is vain. Since lordly man has ruled the earth
Arcadian pleasures by the orchard ways
Are gone with all the peace of pastoral days.
Life,” said the moth, “is cheap. The world’s gone wrong.”
And then he sang to me this tipsy song:—

“Oh, life was glad when Dad was a lad,
Ere man grew scientific;
But he gave his heart to the slayer’s art,
And life has grown terrific.
Fill up, fill up the stirrup-cup!
Now madness fills the mind most,
Who reeks, who cares how wings we sing?
The bright lights and one glorious binge!
And devil take the hindmost.”

“Alas!” said the moth.
“Alas.
Pinkie or poison-gas—
What does it matter?
We die, since die we must;
But first one glorious bust
Before the furtive slayer comes to scatter
Doom for the moth and the man; with poisonous breath

Sowing his own glad world with dreadful death.
Death from the summer cloud or the sunlit sky.
But once again, before I come to die,
Give me the anodyne that conquers fear.
Dope!” cried the moth, and wept into his beer.

Then, lifting up his tipsy voice again,
Repeated his inebriate refrain:—

“Ho! Dad was gay in a sober way
When bombs and booze were scanty;
But I pin my star to the cocktail bar
Or the bar of a wayside shanty.
The grape, I find, can dull the mind
Of him whom terror grapples.
Then let the purple pinkie flow!
One last wild wassail ere we go!
And you can keep your apples.”