We have to thank Julian Croft for this selection of Slessor’s light verse first published in Smith's Weekly between February 1928 and November 1933. Here is a worthy successor to Slessor’s Darlinghurst Nights, until now the only selection of frivolous Slessor available to the general reader. The verses here are no less charming than those of the earlier selection and their omission from Darlinghurst Nights, first published in 1933, seems merely to be based on the fact that they do not fit easily into the theme of that volume. They are certainly no less delightfully capricious in their rhyme schemes and no less artfully artless.

Take, for example, the first stanza of the poem Julian Croft has chosen to name the selection:

The beach is not entirely free.

The sands are far from trackless,

When Betty dances to the sea,

So rapturously backless:

By this, we don't impute a lack

In one whose back is peerless

FOR WHO.

POSSESSING SUCH A BACK.

COULD BE DESCRIBED

AS REARLESS?