| |
| 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. | 5 |
| |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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; | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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; | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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 | 40 |
| In her wan face; swift passions brim | |
| In those brown eyes too soft for blame; | |
| Her form is sinuous and slim— | |
| That lyric line of breast and limb! | |
| |
| But one there waits whose brown face glows, | 45 |
| Whose cheeks with Winter’s kisses smart— | |
| The flushing petals of a rose. | |
| Of earth and sun she is a part; | |
| Her brow is Greek and Greek her heart. | |
| |
| At love she laughs a faint disdain; | 50 |
| Her heart no weakly one to charm; | |
| Robust and fragrant as the rain, | |
| The dark bush soothed her with his balm, | |
| The mountains gave her of their calm. | |
| |
| Her fresh young figure, lithe and tall, | 55 |
| Her radiant eyes, her brow benign, | |
| She is the peerless queen of all— | |
| The maid, the country, that I shrine | |
| In this far-banished heart of mine! | |
| |
| And over the loping leagues of green | 60 |
| A lone land waits with a hope serene— | |
| My own land calls like a prisoner queen— | |
| But oh, the long loping leagues between! | |
| |
