Written In Australia
THE WIDE sun stares without a cloud:
Whipped by his glances truculent
The earth lies quivering and cowed.
My heart is hot with discontent:
I hate this haggard continent.
But over the loping leagues of sea
A lone land calls to her children free:
My own land holding her arms to me—
But oh, the long loping leagues of sea.
The grey old city is dumb with heat;
No breeze comes leaping, naked, rude,
Adown the narrow, high-walled street;
Upon the night thick perfumes brood:
The evening oozes lassitude.
But over the edges of my town,
Swept in a tide that ne’er abates,
The riotous breezes tumble down;
My heart looks home, looks home where waits
The Windy City of the Straits!
The land lies desolate and stripped;
Across its waste has thinly strayed
A tattered host of eucalypt
From whose gaunt uniform is made
A ragged penury of shade.
But over my isles the forest drew
A mantle thick—save where a peak
Shows his grim teeth a-snarl—and through
The filtered coolness creek and creek,
Tangled in ferns, in whispers speak.
And there the placid great lakes are;
And brimming rivers proudly force
Their ice-cold tides. Here, like a scar,
Dry-lipped, a withered water-course
Crawls from a long-forgotten source.
My glance, home-gazing, scarce discerns
This listless girl, in whose dark hair
A starry red hibiscus burns;
Her pallid cheeks are like a pair
Of nuns, bloom-ravished, yet so fair.
And like a sin her warm lips flame
In her wan face; swift passions brim
In those brown eyes too soft for blame;
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Henry Adams
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