Of the man who made the contry, sing in eulogistic phrases,
   His patriot fame must never fade away.
He is fat, and blessed of fortune, and the daily paper raises
   Its voice to do him honour every day.


He is clad in finest linen and in broadcloth sleek and sable -
   The purple is emblazoned in his phiz -
And he wears a wealth of diamnonds and a watch-chain like a cable -
   The man who made the country what it is.


He laments o'er modern movements, like a fine, old, crusted Tory,
   And grieves to see the socialistic drift.
He is used to point a moral and adorn a little story,
   And he poses as a monument of Thrift.


He's the stamp, admirers tell us, of the noblest nation-makers -
   A Trojan in the pioneering fight;
He was here in eighteen-forty, and he grabbed the fertile acres,
   And dummied like a hero left and right.


Whilst the greed of gain drove others out to delve for golden gravel
   This patriot was faithful to the soil,
And he watched his pastures widen and his restless fences travel
   O'er hill and dale, encompassing the spoil.


Never toiled he, and he spun not, but he held the lands, and labour
   Was suppliant and grateful to its lord,
And the workers in the cities and each sweating nearer neighbour
   Was shorn, like other sheep, to swell his hoard.


Now he flaunts it on the block, and twenty men of lowly station
   Might live on what he pays away for fizz;
He's an M.L.C., a churchman, and a bulwark of the nation -
   The man who made the country what it is.


On the great, grey plains the lost wind wanders, east and westward blowing
   The restless dust of dead men fame disowns,
The pioneers who forward to the front were ever going,
   And paving us a pathway with their bones.


And the men who cleft the bush through, and who hewed the hills asunder,
   Who knit the iron thews, and laid the way,
Who o'erthrew the rock-bound mountains, and who spanned the rivers under,
   And set the engines going - where are they?


Where are they who to the nether hells went down to beard the devil
   And robbed him of his ruddy, hoarded gold;
And the men who wrought the roads, and they who laid the forests level,
   And bade the soil its secret gifts unfold ?


Where the sun-browned, bearded swagmen, bred on labour and privation,
   By whom the sure foundation here was laid?
Have we given all the glory to the men who made the nation,
   Or to those bloated men the nation made?

"Edward Dyson"
The Bulletin, 13 January 1894, p17