Listen to the thunder swelling
    Till the mighty west vibrates!
’Tis the horny-handed yelling
    For the Labour candidates!
Hear the language of the frisky
    “Push” assisting at the fun:
Liberty, and rum and whisky!
    Sydney town in ’91.

Whack the poor and cut a caper,
    Turn the taps and shout wharroo!
For each Sydney leading paper
    Has a candidate or two.
Every new one is an ember,
    Lighting up this land of sin—
Clever little B——k is member
    For the Sydney Bulletin.

Wherefore hang our curls in sloppy
    Mats of ink upon our brow?
Hark! the devil yells for copy,
    And the comps are swearing now.
Put in Parkes and Dan O’Connor
    While the nation swears and laughs,
They are good—upon my honour
    They are good for paragraphs!

Stone them, egg them, flour-bag them,
    Pelt and whelt them black and blue!
Swear at them, and bully-rag them,
    Vote for them, and put them through!
What is fame, and what is money
    While the sky is still o’erhead?
I would vote for Garden Honey,
    Only Garden Honey’s dead.

“Every man’s as good’s his neighbour,”
    “We will lead the nations’ van.”
(If he’d swear to fight for Labour
    We’d return a Chinaman.)
Squash the hills and shout “Hosanna!”
    Wake the nations! New South Wales!
Nail the shining Southern Banner
    To the Pole with two-inch nails!

Renegades! our hearts grow lighter
    As the roving seasons flow.
Time will teach, for e’en the writer
    Yelled for Freedom long ago;
Yelled unto the hungry toiler,
    Fought to break the tyrant’s power,
Till his over-heated boiler
    Needed wetting ev’ry hour!

What care we for Federation?
    And the loan may float or drown;
Will a brother in the nation
    Only lend us half-a-crown?
Heavens! but our heads are aching,
    There’s a throbbing in our brows;
Let us go to gaol for taking
    Part in federated rows.

Ah! the land without elections
    Is a lonely land indeed;
We must take our joy in sections,
    While our flaming countries bleed!
Glorious harvest for reporters—
    Load your pens and fire away,
While the railway guards and porters
    Get a jolly holiday.

Let us think and rave and borrow
    Yards from poets who are dead—
Bards who died of ruin and sorrow
    In the gutter and the shed.
Federate the hanged creation!
    (Snake that’s born of rum! what’s that?)
Lo! the throes of inspiration
    Scare the mangy office cat!

Though the scythe of Time is brittle,
    Taking every sweep a year,
We shall jog his arm a little
    In the Southern Hemisphere.
Let the northern nations squabble,
    We will row another boat;
Lord, we’ll make the planet wobble
    When we get “One Man One Vote”.

We will hold this Eldorado
    Island of the evergreen;
Let the soldiers and Recardo
    Go to hell—or Argentine!
We’ve the power, and we are waiting;
    Why the day of deeds defer
While our sons are emigrating
    To the planet Jupiter?

Brightest spot upon the planet
    Is the land where I was born,
And the lunatics who man it
    Are the rising sons of morn.
Take the song and sing it gaily,
    For the times are very ripe;
Let the “crawling, lying daily”
    Set it up in mortgaged type.

The muse was forcibly ejected at this point.