I'm lying' on the barren ground that's baked and cracked with drought

And don’t know if my legs or back or heart is most wore out
I've got no spirits left to rise and smooth me aching' brow

I'm too knocked up to light a fire and bile the Billy now.
Oh it's tramping', tramping', tra-a-mpin', in flies an' dust an' heat,

Or it's tramping' tramping' tra-a-a-mpin
through mud and slush 'n sleet

It's tramp an' tramp for tucker -- one everlasting' strife,
An' wearing' out yer boots an' heart in the wasting' of yer life.

They whine o' lost an' wasted lives in idleness and crime
I've wasted mine for twenty years, and grafted all the time

And never drunk the stuff I earned, nor gambled when I shore
But somehow when yer on the track yer life seems wasted more

A long dry stretch of thirty miles I've tramped this broilin' day
All for the off-chance of a job a hundred miles away

There's twenty hungry beggars wild for any job this year
An' fifty might be at the shed while I am lyin' here