<h2> Australian Bards and Bush Reviewers </h2>
<p>While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse<br/>
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,<br/>
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part —<br/>
You're a clever southern writer, scarce inferior to Bret Harte.<br/>
<br/>
If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks,<br/>
And discover shining rivers where there's only mud and sticks;<br/>
If you picture 'mighty forests' where the mulga spoils the view —<br/>
You're superior to Kendall, and ahead of Gordon too.<br/>
<br/>
If you swear there's not a country like the land that gave you birth,<br/>
And its sons are just the noblest and most glorious chaps on earth;<br/>
If in every girl a Venus your poetic eye discerns,<br/>
You are gracefully referred to as the 'young Australian Burns'.<br/>
<br/>
But if you should find that bushmen — spite of all the poets say —<br/>
Are just common brother-sinners, and you're quite as good as they —<br/>
You're a drunkard, and a liar, and a cynic, and a sneak,<br/>
Your grammar's simply awful and your intellect is weak.<br/></p>
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