To Be Amused


 * You ask me to be gay and glad
 * While lurid clouds of danger loom,
 * And vain and bad and gambling mad,
 * Australia races to her doom.
 * You bid me sing the light and fair,
 * The dance, the glance on pleasure's wings -
 * While you have wives who will not bear,
 * And beer to drown the fear of things.


 * A war with reason you would wage
 * To be amused for your short span,
 * Until your children's heritage
 * Is claimed for China by Japan.
 * The football match, the cricket score,
 * The "scraps", the tote, the mad'ning Cup -
 * You drunken fools that evermore
 * "To-morrow morning" sober up!


 * I see again with haggard eyes,
 * The thirsty land, the wasted flood;
 * Unpeopled plains beyond the skies,
 * And precious streams that run to mud;
 * The ruined health, the wasted wealth,
 * In our mad cities by the seas,
 * The black race suicide by stealth,
 * The starved and murdered industries!


 * You bid me make a farce of day,
 * And make a mockery of death;
 * While not five thousand miles away
 * The yellow millions pant for breath!
 * But heed me now, nor ask me this -
 * Lest you too late should wake to find
 * That hopeless patriotism is
 * The strongest passion in mankind!


 * You'd think the seer sees, perhaps,
 * While staring on from days like these,
 * Politeness in the conquering Japs,
 * Or mercy in the banned Chinese!
 * I mind the days when parents stood,
 * And spake no word, while children ran
 * From Christian lanes and deemed it good
 * To stone a helpless Chinaman.


 * I see the stricken city fall,
 * The fathers murdered at their doors,
 * The sack, the massacre of all
 * Save healthy slaves and paramours -
 * The wounded hero at the stake,
 * The pure girl to the leper's kiss -
 * God, give us faith, for Christ's own sake
 * To kill our womankind ere this.


 * I see the Bushman from Out Back,
 * From mountain range and rolling downs,
 * And carts race on each rough bush track
 * With food and rifles from the towns;
 * I see my Bushmen fight and die
 * Amongst the torn blood-spattered trees,
 * And hear all night the wounded cry
 * For men! More men and batteries!


 * I see the brown and yellow rule
 * The southern lands and southern waves,
 * White children in the heathen school,
 * And black and white together slaves;
 * I see the colour-line so drawn
 * (I see it plain and speak I must),
 * That our brown masters of the dawn
 * Might, aye, have fair girls for their lusts!


 * With land and life and race at stake -
 * No matter which race wronged, or how -
 * Let all and one Australia make
 * A superhuman effort now.
 * Clear out the blasting parasites,
 * The paid-for-one-thing manifold,
 * And curb the goggled "social-lights"
 * That "scorch" to nowhere with our gold.


 * Store guns and ammunition first,
 * Build forts and warlike factories,
 * Sink bores and tanks where drought is worst,
 * Give over time to industries.
 * The outpost of the white man's race,
 * Where next his flag shall be unfurled,
 * Make clean the place! Make strong the place!
 * Call white men in from all the world!