Let others make the songs of love
For our young struggling nation;
But I will sing while e-er I live
The Songs of Irrigation;
For while the white man shall beget
The white man-s son and daughter,
The two most precious things for us
Shall still be wheat and water.

We-ve 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 scheme-s afoot,
Our country to deliver
From drought and death on blazing waste,
By long neglected river.
You-ll see the boodlers of the world
Rush in from every quarter:
They want the land,-the gold-reefed sand,
And now they-ll 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 we-ve made our long canals,
And lakes in every quarter,
Then ours would be the -guarantee�-
The Trust would own the water.

They-d 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
They-d bar our sons and daughters-
They-d 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.
We-ll 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.