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 /><br />Henry Lawson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/australian-bards-and-bush-reviewers/
