“Someone Else’s Country” Sheet Music (pdf).
“Someone Else’s Country” Karaoke (midi with lyrics).
Lyrics: Leslie Fish.
Tune: Leslie Fish.
Once there was a raw, new land, where outlaws went to make a stand,
When their mother countries would as soon have seen them dead.
They had no other place to go, but here they stayed to build and sow,
And when the older nations came to take them back, they said:
This is someone else’s country, land that you had better leave alone.
Keep your hands off other people’s country, or who knows what might happen to your own?
By craftsman’s shop and family farm with love of freedom and strength of arm,
They built a mighty nation sometimes cruel and sometimes blind,
But still the right outweighed the wrong. The land grew wealthy, vast, and strong,
So long as all its people kept their founding dream in mind.
This is someone else’s country, land that you had better leave alone.
Keep your hands off other people’s country, or who knows what might happen to your own?
An ancient empire built on slaves came conquering across the waves.
The new land and the empire met head-on in bloody war.
The younger nation won the day, but with their victory took away
Too much of empire manners, not what they’d been fighting for.
This is someone else’s country, land that you had better leave alone.
Keep your hands off other people’s country, or who knows what might happen to your own?
They made new gods of Luxury, of Power and Efficiency.
Plantations took the countryside; the factory took the town.
The farmer lost his land again and had to work for other men,
Who looked on other countries as just jewels for their crown.
This is someone else’s country, land that you had better leave alone.
Keep your hands off other people’s country, or who knows what might happen to your own?
Then, one tiny country said, “Well fight until we’re free or dead.”
The new-grown empire smashed them down and killed their man of peace.
So, the last respect its people had went down the drain and left them madly
Wondering why corruption grew and riots wouldn’t cease.
This is someone else’s country, land that you had better leave alone.
Keep your hands off other people’s country, or who knows what might happen to your own?
So, they lost belief in right and wrong; they only lived to get along.
And people raised on narrow causes don’t defend you well.
So, when the savages stormed the wall, the people shrugged and left it fall.
No one cared to save it, so the Roman Empire fell.
They put their hands to other people’s country, land that they’d have better left alone.
They tried to master someone else’s country, and all they really did was lose their own.