Tune, Liberty Hall.
Britannia, fair guardian of this favour’d land,
Lately sanction’d a scheme, in full Cabinet plann’d,
For transporting her sons who from honour dare stray,
To that sweet spot terrestrial, term’d BOTANY BAY.
Toll de roll, &c.
Now this BAY, by some blockheads we’ve sagely been told,
Was unknown to the fam’d navigators of old;
But this I deny, in terms homely and blunt,
For BOTANY BAY is the spot we call —.
Toll de roll, &c.
Our ancestor Adam, ’tis past any doubt,
Was the famous Columbus that found the spot out;
He brav’d ev’ry billow, rock, quicksand, and shore,
To steer thro’ THE PASSAGE none ere steer’d before.
Toll de roll, &c.
Kind Nature, ere Adam had push’d off to sea,
Bid him be of good cheer, for his pilot she’d be:
Then his cables he slipp’d, and STOOD STRAIGHT for the BAY,
But was stopp’d in his passage about THE MIDWAY.
Toll de roll, &c.
Avast! Adam cry’d, I’m dismasted, I doubt,
If I don’t tack the HEAD of my VESSEL about;
Take courage, cry’d Nature, and leave it to me,
For ’tis only THE LINE that divides THE RED SEA.
Toll de roll, &c.
Tho’ shook by the STROKE, Adam’s MAST stood upright,
His BALLAST was steady, his TACKLING quite tight;
Then a breeze springing up, down the RED STRAITS he ran,
And, o’erjoy’d with his voyage, he fir’d off a GREAT GUN.
Toll de roll, &c.
High from the MAST HEAD, by the help of ONE EYE,
The HEART of the BAY did old Adam espy;
And, alarm’d at a noise—to him Nature did say,
That it was the TRADE WIND, which blows always ONE WAY.
Toll de roll, &c.
So transported was Adam in BOTANY BAY,
He dame Nature implor’d to SPEND there night and day,
And curious he try’d the BAY’S bottom to sound,
But his LINE was too short by a YARD from the ground.
Toll de roll, &c.
The time being out, Nature’s sentence had pass’d,
Adam humbly a favour of her bounty ask’d,
That when stock’d with provisions, and ev’ry thing sound,
To BOTANY BAY he again might be bound.
Toll de roll, &c.
Nature granted the boon both to him and his race,
And said, oft I’ll transport you to that charming place;
But never, cry’d she, as you honour my word,
Set sail with a Clap, Pox, or Famine on board.
Toll de roll, &c.
Then this BOTANY BAY, or whate’er be the name,
I have prov’d is the spot from whence all of us came;
May we there be transported, like Adam our sire,
And never return ’fore the time shall expire.
Toll de roll, &c.