Explore "To be Amused" by Henry Lawson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You ask me to be gay and glad / While lurid clouds of danger loom, / And vain and bad and gambling mad, / Australia races to her doom. / You bid me sing the light and fair, / The dance, the glance on pleasure's wings -- / While you have wives who will not bear, / And beer to drown the fear of things.
A war with reason you would wage / To be amused for your short span, / Until your children's heritage / Is claimed for China by Japan. / The football match, the cricket score, / The "scraps", the tote, the mad'ning Cup -- / You drunken fools that evermore / "To-morrow morning" sober up!