The Lady of the Motor Car

Henry Lawson, 1914

The Lady of the Motor Car she stareth straight ahead;
Her face is like the stone, my friend, her face is like the dead;
Her face is like the stone, my friend, because she is "well-bred" —
Because her heart is dead, my friend, as all her life was dead.

The Lady of the Motor Car she speaketh like a man,
Because her girlhood never was, nor womanhood began.
She says, "To the Aus-traliah, John!" and "Home" when she hath been.
And to the husband at her side she says, "Whhat doo you mean?"

The Lady of the Motor Car her very soul is dead,
Because she never helped herself nor had to work for bread;
The Lady of the Motor Car sits in her sitting-room,
Her stony face has never changed though all the land is gloom.

Her motor-car hath gone to hell — the hell that man hath made;
She sitteth in her sitting-room, and she is not afraid;
Nor fear of life or death, or worse, could change her well-bred mien;
She knits socks in a stony way, and says, "Whhat doo they mean?"

The lady in her carriage sits, with cushions turning green —
And once it was a mourning-coach, and once it held a queen.
Behind a coachman and a horse too old to go to war,
She driveth to her "four o'clocks" and to her sick and poor.

And when the enemy bombards and walls begin to fall,
The Lady of the Motor Car shall stand above you all;
Amongst the strong and silent brave, and those who pray or shriek,
She'll nurse the wounded from the grave and pacify the weak.

And if the enemy prevails, with death on every side,
The Lady of the Car shall die as heroines have died,
But if the victory remains, she'll be what she hath been,
And, sitting in her motor-car, shall say: "Whhat doo you mean?"