Victoria's adverse trade balance for the year is over £20,000,000.
My adverse balance for the year
Is only six pounds seventeen,
And yet, the prospect is so drear,
My agony of mind so keen,
I simply hate to ponder o'er
My mental state if it were more.
If I had spent a hundred pounds
More than I earned, who, goodness me!
I'd rend the air with woeful sounds
And beat my breast in agony.
And yet, in mathematics pure,
This ratio does not endure.
For instance, if, in one short year,
I spent some twenty million pound,
My sorrow would not be, I fear,
Proportionately so profound,
I'd simply think I'd had a prime
And altogether gay old time.
First published in The Sun-News Pictorial, 4 August 1927
Author reference sites: C.J. Dennis, Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
