The Melbourne International Exhibition
II. - Victoria salutes the other Australian colonies, and asks them to unite with her in greeting her other guests. They then welcome the various countries of Asia, Africa (Egypt to Caffraria, &c.), America (the South American Republics, Empire of Brazil, Dominion of Canada, and the United States of North America); then France, Spain, and Portugal; Italy, Greece, Russia, Switzerland; then Holland and Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Norway, and Sweden; then Britain. Ceased is the sound of the chisel, and hushed is the hammer's ring,
And the echoes that haunted the empty halls for a while have taken wing;
And the doors are open, and overhead are a thousand flags unfurled,
While with music and song to the House she has built Victoria welcomes the world.
For the nations she bade with friendly voice have hearkened to her behest,
And treasure-laden, o'er land and sea, comes many an honoured guest,
Daughters of cultured Europe, deigning her day to grace,
Children of antique Asia, Africa's dusky race,
America's mighty offspring and they of Australia's line,
And they of the Thousands Islands set where Pacific waters shine.
Oh, never a Roman triumph, nor court of mightiest Suzerain
Hath gathered such as have sailed to her. Nor gifts like to theirs have lain
At the feet of Wisdom's favoured one, when the Princes came from far,
And the swarthy Queen to the Great Sea steered by the light of the still pole star. And ye whom frugal Flanders has dowered with all her store,
Her old cathedral cities, her freedom won of yore,
When by the hands that raised them, her dykes asunder torn,
Swift poured the burghers' vengeance for Egmont and for Horn;
And thou whose peerless Princess, pure as thy Baltic foam,
Is dear in ancient Windsor as in her Danish home,
(For where thy raven reached not, thy dove hath found her rest,
And in the heart of England hath made herself a nest!)
Thou, dweller by the Danube, thou, keeper of the Rhine;
Thou, blue-eyed Scandinavia, with fragrant crown of pine;
All, all who followed Odin, the leader and the priest,
From bondage and from darkness in some forgotten East,
And tilled the trackless forest, and tamed the wild North Sea,
Account us as your kindred, for kin, in truth, are we! And now to her we hasten, with daughterly embrace,
To whom young isles do homage, and empires old give place,
And every zone pays tribute of wealth, and earth, and wave,
The refuge of the alien, the champion of the slave!
On triple throne unshaken as adamantine wall,
Long may'st thou sit, Britannia, dear mother of us all! Thou, who givest the eye to see, and the ready hand to do,
And a nation's place in the earth's fair space, give us Thy blessing, too!
We hear the cool Antarctic winds in the golden wheatfields pipe,
And the chant the swart Kanaka sings where the rustling cane grows ripe,
And we ask of Thee, who hast dowered our land with the kindly sun and soil
Which fill with fruitage of farthest climes the hopeful hands of toil,
That ever in love we may nurture, too, the people which dwelt apart,
When they seek new life from our Younger World and a home within her heart.
And if, perchance, from the eaves of peace and the sheltering olive bough,
Our sons shall sail to a stormy sea and the shock of the mail-clad prow,
May they show that not in vain they have borne the stress of the tropic day,
Or lain, toil-spent, in the miner's tent, or made in the wilds a way.