While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part --You're a clever southern writer,scarce inferior to Bret Harte.
If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks,And discover shining rivers where there's only mud and sticks;If you picture `mighty forests'where the mulga spoils the view --You're superior to Kendall,and ahead of Gordon too.
If you swear there's not a country like the land that gave you birth,And its sons are just the noblest and most glorious chaps on earth;If in every girl a Venus your poetic eye discerns,You are gracefully referred to as the `young Australian Burns'.
But if you should find that bushmen --spite of all the poets say --Are just common brother-sinners,and you're quite as good as they --You're a drunkard,and a liar,and a cynic,and a sneak,Your grammar's simply awful and your intellect is weak.
