Rio Grande's Last Race, and Other Verses

It's Grand

  It's grand to be a squatter
   And sit upon a post,
  And watch your little ewes and lambs
   A-giving up the ghost.

  It's grand to be a 'cockie'
   With wife and kids to keep,
  And find an all-wise Providence
   Has mustered all your sheep.

  It's grand to be a Western man,
   With shovel in your hand,
  To dig your little homestead out
   From underneath the sand.

  It's grand to be a shearer,
   Along the Darling side,
  And pluck the wool from stinking sheep
   That some days since have died.

  It's grand to be a rabbit
   And breed till all is blue,
  And then to die in heaps because
   There's nothing left to chew.

  It's grand to be a Minister
   And travel like a swell,
  And tell the Central District folk
   To go to — Inverell.

  It's grand to be a Socialist
   And lead the bold array
  That marches to prosperity
   At seven bob a day.

  It's grand to be an unemployed
   And lie in the Domain,
  And wake up every second day
   And go to sleep again.

  It's grand to borrow English tin
   To pay for wharves and Rocks,
  And then to find it isn't in
   The little money-box.

  It's grand to be a democrat
   And toady to the mob,
  For fear that if you told the truth
   They'd hunt you from your job.

  It's grand to be a lot of things
   In this fair Southern land,
  But if the Lord would send us rain,
   That would, indeed, be grand!