Cullen Gouldsbury Books

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TO AN OLD RIFLE by Cullen Gouldsbury

You're worn in the barrel, you're gone in the stock,
Your sights are deceptive and battered askew,
You're foul in the breech and you're crank in the lock,
Yet I love you far more than I loved you when new!
I've done a fair quotum of stalking and shooting, Old Rifle, with you.

You didn't cost much! - you were bought second-hand
(For times were too hard, and my purse was too thin!)
I saw you one day in a shop in the Strand,
Loved you, and longed for you - aye, and went in!
The shop-fellow fingered you lovingly said that your price was a sin.

Whose were you before? shall I hazard a view?
Were you loot of a lord, or a wandering earl?
Just kit of a "champagne-safari" or two?
Or sold by a man who had married his girl,
Forsaking the elephant-track lest it put her dear hair out of curl?

The point's unimportant - we'll waive it and pass.
You're mine for the present, and mine you'll remain!
Ten years we have wandered through African grass,
Ten years we've been shooting in bushland and plain,
It's told on us both, more or less - but I'm blest if I'll sell you again!

Remember the lion I grazed in the head
Who charged us that night in the bed of the stream?
He shewed us, in sooth (since we thought he was dead),
That things are but rarely the same as they seem,
And he was a gem, I remember; uncommonly broad in the beam.

That elephant cow, with the fat little calf
Who curtsied and bobbed when we tried to get by,
Till I shot her at last. And the idiot giraffe
Who gibbered away with his head in the sky
That morning we followed the rhino, and seemed so determined to die.

Yes! Eland and hartebeeste, sable and roan,
Puku and reedbuck you've shot by the score -
Elephant-paths we have followed alone,
Safety-catch over and eyes on the spoor.
Days, that are finished and done with, Old Rifle!
It's never no more!

Ah well! Those are days that are vanished and dead!
And gone are the dawn and the dusk on the plain,
It's Tooting, or Balham, or Clapham instead
These are our lot for the years that remain...
But while there's a pull-through to clean you, I'm damned if I'll sell you again.