The Water

Let others make the songs of love     For our young struggling nation;     But I will sing while eer I live     The Songs of Irrigation;     For while the white man shall beget     The white mans son and daughter,     The two most precious things for us     Shall still be wheat and water.     Weve been drought-ruined in the West,     And ever in my dreaming     I see wide miles of waving crops     And sheets of water gleaming,     On plains where fortune died of thirst     When my brave father sought her,     I see the painted barges pass     Along the winding water.     And now the glorious schemes afoot,     Our country to deliver     From drought and death on blazing waste,     By long neglected river.     Youll see the boodlers of the world     Rush in from every quarter:     They want the land,, the gold-reefed sand,     And now theyll want the water.     Bright intellects will plan the dykes,     With little gold to gild them,     Bright intellects will plan the dykes,     The people pay to build them;     And when weve made our long canals,     And lakes in every quarter,     Then ours would be the guarantee,     The Trust would own the water.     Theyd hold the bores and aqueducts,     The water-ways and barges,     And we would live, or we would starve     According to their charges;     From all the Edens in the West     Theyd bar our sons and daughters,     Theyd hold the land, ten leagues or so,     Each side the rippling waters.     But those who fight to hold their own,     The Lord and time delivers;     As we have held our railway lines,     So we shall hold our rivers.     Well find the money, as was found     The money spent in slaughter,     To build our dykes and build our dams,     And we shall own the water.