Something Of Value Lyrics - Singles - Eric Bogle

"SOMETHING OF VALUE" 

-Eric Bogle 

I can see the Southern Cross tonight 

While here below, bathed in it's light 

The Dreamtime land safe, snug and tight is sleeping 

Wrapped in complacency and contentedness 

No discordant sounds disturb our rest 

While the gentle souls we've dispossesed are weeping 

We took it all by the gun and the sword 

By the right of our race and in the name of our God 

Though as outcasts ourselves, transported, condemned 

None knew better than we the injustice of men 

We took it all in our hunger and need 

Enslaved by our past and consumed by our greed 

And left them to beg for the scraps at our door 

While we called them drunkards and wasters and whores 

They've been drowning, drowning in their tears 

for the last two hundread years 

From England's New Jerusalem 

to the Dreamtime land the tall ships came 

with human cattle in convict chains to bind them 

In the grim fight just to stay alive 

Dreams must struggle to survive 

Few could see the glitt'ring prize before them 

We had it all in the palm of our hand 

A new hope, a new dream, a new life, a new land 

One last chance to break from the chains of the past 

To build something of value, build something to last 

This ancient land was a vast empty page 

Waiting for the great writers of a brand new age 

The future was ours to protect or profane 

A paradise lost, a paradise gained 

Now tell me, is paradise here, 

after two hundred years? 

So now, beneath the Southern Cross 

it's time to tally up the cost 

of what we've gained and what we've lost forever 

Though much has gone we can't replace 

Those of us who love this place 

Together now, must turn and face the future 

So here's to us all, we're frail humankind 

who wander through life mostly helpless and blind 

To our courage and cowardice, our humor and pain 

Our hundred steps forward, ninety-nine back again 

Yes here's to us all, the wise and the fools 

The indifferent, the caring, the kind and the cruel 

As we march to the beat of an uncertain drum 

Stumbling towards what we may yet become 

Towards the brave new frontiers, 

of the next two hundred years