Page:Backblock Ballads and Later Verses (C.J. Dennis, 1918).djvu/133

They gazed at him in wonder, then they slowly backed away;
For "throwing" things was novel in that neolithic day;
'Twas the prehistoric "argument," the first faint gleam of "art,"
Yet those mammoths seemed to take it in exceedingly bad part.

Then a hoary, agéd bunyip rose, and spluttered loud and long;
He said the black man's arguments were very, very wrong.
"You forget," he said, indignantly, "the land is ours by right,
And to seek to wrest it from us would be—well, most impolite."

But the savage shook his woolly head and smiled a savage smile,
And went on hurling prehistoric missiles all the while,
Till the bunyip and the others couldn't bear the argument,
And they said, "Why, this is robbery!" But, all the same—they went.

Some centuries—or, maybe, it was æons—later on,
When the bunyip and the mammoth kangaroo had passed and gone;
While the black man slowly profited by what his fathers saw,
While he learned to fashion weapons and establish tribal law,

There came a band of pale-faced men in ships, from oversea,
Who viewed the land, then shook their heads and sadly said, "Dear me!"
Then they landed rum and school books, and a trusty gun or two,
And started out to "civilize," as whites are apt to do.