Life's a hurly-burly bustle
That all human life engages.
One prolonged and endless tussle
For its luxuries and wages.
Each for self with eager tension,
Envious of friend or brother,
All with painful condescension.
Looking down on one another.
Should not honest toil have merit.
Art that soul and brain designeth ?
Since we one and all inherit
Gifts that only work refineth.
Yea ! the labourer's worth his hire,
When his hands are keen and willing,
Not the task, but the desire,
And the method of fulfilling.
Proves a man of noble nature.
Sweep or lord of lofty station.
More than laws of Legislature,
Honest workers make a nation.
Then let each respect his neighbour.
Judging work and virtue rightly.
See the dignity of labour
Labelling no duty lightly.
--AREGEE.
Notes
From the NSW Newspaper The Mount Barker Courier and Onkaparinga and Gumeracha Advertiser 9 Aug 1929 p. 1.
Maybe this composition was influenced by the 1929 Crash in the United States, in the leadup to the 1930s Great Depression.
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