The Men of the Public Works.

When the old road's been re-graded,
And it's “pegged” from end to end,
And the devil has been taken out
Of the devil's elbow bend,
Then send along your “grader”—for the work they say she'll do,
(The work of twenty shovelmen) by the turn of a wheel or two.
You'll find us in the back-blocks
On a Taranaki road,
Breaking Taranaki boulders,
Twelve or thirteen to the load.
They blast them in the quarries
And they're cursed upon the roads,
As they bring them in the lorries
In their never-ending loads.

—W. T. Tolley.