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The Foreign Drunk

Topics: classic

When you get tight in foreign lands     You never need go slinking,     No female neighbours lift their hands     And say The brute!, hes drinking!     No mischief-maker runs with smiles     To give your wife a notion,     For she may be ten thousand miles     Across the bounding ocean.     Oh! Ive been Scottish fu all night,     (Oer ills o life victorious),     And Ive been Dutch and German tight,     And French and Dago glorious.     We saw no boa-constrictors then,     In every ladys boa,     Though we got drunk with Antwerp men,     And woke up in Genoa!     When you get tight in foreign lands,     All foreigners are brothers,     You drink their drink and grasp their hands     And never wish for others.     Their foreign ways and foreign songs,     And girls, you take delight in:     The war-whoop that you raise belongs     To the country you get tight in.     When you get tight in a foreign port,     (Or rather bacchanalian),     You need no tongue for love or sport     Save your own good Australian.     (A girl in Naples kept me square,     Or helped me to recover,     For mortal knoweth everywhere     The language of the lover).     When you get tight in foreign parts,     With tongue and legs unstable,     They do their best, with all their hearts     And help you all theyre able.     Ah me! It was a happy year,     Though all the rest were blanky,     When I got drunk on lager beer,     And sobered up on Swankey.

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"When you get tight in foreign lands..."

Henry Lawson's contribution to classic is further solidified by the brilliance found in "The Foreign Drunk"... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

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"His old clay pipe stuck in his mouth,     His hat ..."

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