Classic Poem

The moan of starving cattle,
The glare of brassy skies,
The Darling is a mud-hole,
The Murrumbidgee dries;
Our lakes are blazing phantoms,
And War is drawing near —
I wish we had the Old Rhine,
I wish we had it here.

I wish I had the snow peak
And had the mountain wall —
They do no good in Europe;
They do no good at all.
I'd set them up in Queensland,
Along the Condamine;
I'd clear the Darling country,
And flush it with the Rhine.

O had it been in China —
In China old and strange —
They'd long have locked the Darling,
And built the mountain range,
And dug a sea to build it
Where we can't float a scow;
But we'd take ten times longer
To lock the river now.

They've gone to loaf till April,
The Bust-and-Boodle crew,
Who drive their little nails in
And draw their rusty screw.
I wish we had a Kaiser,
I wish we had a Czar,
I wish we had a bloomin' Chow
To alter things that are.
(The old Empress of China would
Soon fix up things that are.)