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(Excerpt)
AUSTRALIA, in her varied forms, expands, | |
| And opens to the sky her hundred lands, | |
| From where the day-beam paints the waters blue, | |
| Around the blessed islands of Arroo, | |
| And life, in all its myriad mouldings, plays, | 5 |
| Amid the beauty of the tropic blaze,— | |
| Where summer watches with undying eye, | |
| And equal day and night divide the sky,— | |
| Where the throned Phœbus wakens all the flowers, | |
| To do him homage in his own bright bowers,— | 10 |
| And Cynthia, on her empyrean height, | |
| Holds crowded levee through the livelong night,— | |
| Where starlight is a gala of the skies, | |
| And sunset is a cloud-sketched paradise; | |
| Away, away, to where the billows rave, | 15 |
| Around the quenched volcano’s echoing cave,— | |
| Where she, the lonely beauty, sits and smiles, | |
| In sweetness, like an orphan of the isles, | |
| Fair as fair Aphrodite on the deep, | |
| But lone as Ariadne on her steep! | 20 |
| Away,—away, to where the dolphins play, | |
| And the sea-lion tracks his pathless way; | |
| Away,—away, where southern icebergs roll, | |
| Upon the troubled billows round the pole; | |
| Where the bold mariner, whose course has run | 25 |
| Beyond the journey of the circling sun, | |
| Condemned, for lingering months, to sleep and wake | |
| By nights that cloud not, days that never break, | |
| To watch by stars that fade not from the eye, | |
| And moons that have no rival in the sky, | 30 |
| Lies down to slumber, and awakes to weep | |
| For brighter scenes that rose upon his sleep, | |
| And many a glance from faces far away, | |
| That turned the darkness into more than day,— | |
| Till his fond bosom glows with fancy’s fires, | 35 |
| And hope embodies all the heart desires, | |
| And every vision of his distant home | |
| Warms, like a prophecy of days to come! | |
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| Isles of the Orient! gardens of the East! | |
| Thou giant secret of the liquid waste, | 40 |
| Long ages in untrodden paths concealed, | |
| Or, but in glimpses faint and few revealed, | |
| Like some chimera of the ocean-caves, | |
| Same dark and sphinx-like riddle of the waves, | |
| Till he, the northern Œdipus, unfurled | 45 |
| His venturous sail, and solved it to the world! | |
| Surpassing beauty sits upon thy brow, | |
| But darkness veils thy all of time, save now; | |
| Enshrouded in the shadows of the past, | |
| And secret in thy birth as is the blast! | 50 |
| If, when the waters and the land were weighed, | |
| Thy vast foundations in the deep were laid; | |
| Or, mid the tempests of a thousand years, | |
| Where through the depths her shell the mermaid steers, | |
| Mysterious workmen wrought unseen at thee, | 55 |
| And reared thee, like a Babel, in the sea; | |
| It Afric’s dusky children sought the soil | |
| Which yields her fruits without the tiller’s toil; | |
| Or, southward wandering on his dubious way, | |
| Came to thy blooming shores the swarth Malay;— | 60 |
| ’T is darkness all! long years have o’er thee rolled | |
| Their flight unnoted, and their tale untold! | |
| But beautiful thou art, as fancy deems | |
| The visioned regions of her sweetest dreams; | |
| Fair as the Moslem, in his fervor, paints | 65 |
| The promised valleys of his prophet’s saints; | |
| Bright with the brightness which the poet’s eye | |
| Flings o’er the long-lost bowers of Araby! | |
| The soul of beauty haunts thy sunny glades, | |
| The soul of music whispers through thy shades, | 70 |
| And Nature, gazing on her loveliest plan, | |
| Sees all supremely excellent but man! * * * * * | |
| Now on my soul the rising vision warms, | |
| But mingled in a thousand lovely forms. | |
| Methinks I see Australian landscapes still, | 75 |
| But softer beauty sits on every hill;— | |
| I see bright meadows decked in livelier green, | |
| The yellow cornfield, and the blossomed bean; | |
| A hundred flocks o’er smiling pastures roam, | |
| And hark! the music of the harvest-home. | 80 |
| Methinks I hear the hammer’s busy sound, | |
| And cheerful hum of human voices round,— | |
| The laughter, and the song that lightens toil, | |
| Sung in the language of my native isle; | |
| In mighty bays unnumbered navies ride, | 85 |
| Or come and go upon the distant tide, | |
| In land-locked harbors rest their giant forms, | |
| Or boldly launch upon the “Bay of Storms”; | |
| While the swarth native crowns the glorious plan | |
| In all the towering dignity of man. | 90 |
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| The vision leads me on by many a stream; | |
| And spreading cities crowd upon my dream, | |
| Where turrets darkly frown, and lofty spires | |
| Point to the stars, and sparkle in their fires. | |
| Here Sydney gazes from the mountain-side, | 95 |
| Narcissus-like, upon the glassy tide! | |
| There Hobart stretches, where the Derwent sees | |
| Her flaxen ringlets tremble in the breeze! | |
| O’er rising towns Notasian commerce reigns, | |
| And temples crowd Tasmania’s lovely plains, | 100 |
| And browsing goats, without a keeper, stray, | |
| Where the bushranger tracked the covert way. | |
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| The prospect varies in an endless range, | |
| Villas and lawns go by in ceaseless change. | |
| Glenfinlas! thou hast hundred rival vales, | 105 |
| Where quiet hamlets deck the sloping dales; | |
| And, wafted on the gale from many a dell, | |
| Methinks I hear the village Sabbath bell! | |
| And now the anthem swells; on every hand | |
| A cloud of incense gathers o’er the land; | 110 |
| Faith upward mounts, upon devotion’s wings, | |
| And, like the lark, at heaven’s high portal sings; | |
| From myriad tongues the song of praise is poured, | |
| And o’er them floats “the Spirit of the Lord.” | |
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