Do You Think that I Do Not Know
(Henry Lawson; tune Slim Dusty)

They say that I never have written of love
As a writer of songs should do
They say that I never could touch the strings
With a touch that is firm and true
They say I know nothing of women and men
In the fields where love's roses grow
I must write, they say, with a haunting pen
Do you think that I do not know?

My love burst came like an English spring
In the days when our hair was brown
And the hem of her skirt was a sacred thing
Her hair was an angel's crown
The shock when another man touched her arm
Where the dancer sat in a row'
The hope and despair and the false alarm
Do you think that I do not know?

By the arbor lights on the western farms
You remember the question put
While you held her warm in your quavering arms
You trembled from head to foot
The electric shock from her fingertips
The murmuring answer low
The soft shy yielding of warm red lips
Do you think that I do not know?

She was buried at Brighton, where Gordon sleeps
When I was a world away
And the sad old garden its secret keeps
For nobody knows today
She left a message for me to read
Where the wild, wide oceans flow
Do you know how the heart of a man can bleed?
Do you think that I do not know?

I stood by the grave where the dead girl lies
When the sunlit scene was fair
'Neath the white clouds high in the autumn skies
I answered the message there
But the haunting words of the dead to me
She'll go wherever I go
She lives in the marriage that might have been
Do you think that I do not know?

sung by Martyn Wyndham-Read
SOF