While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verseThe 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.