The Australian

CE more this Autumn-earth is ripe,    Parturient of another type.    While with the Past old nations merge  His foot is on the Future’s verge.    They watch him, as they huddle, pent,          Striding a spacious continent,    Above the level desert’s marge  Looming in his aloofness large.    No flower with fragile sweetness graced—  A lank weed wrestling with the waste;            Pallid of face and gaunt of limb,  The sweetness withered out of him;    Sombre, indomitable, wan,  The juices dried, the glad youth gone.    A little weary from his birth,          His laugh the spectre of a mirth,    Bitter beneath a bitter sky,  To Nature he has no reply.    Wanton, perhaps, and cruel.

Yes,  Is not his sun more merciless?            So drab and neutral is his day,  He finds a splendour in the grey,    And from his life’s monotony  He draws a dreary melody.    When earth so poor a banquet makes          His pleasures at a gulp he takes;    The feast is his to the last crumb:  Drink while he can…the drought will come.    His heart a sudden tropic flower,  He loves and loathes within an hour.            Yet you who by the pools abide,  Judge not the man who swerves aside;    He sees beyond your hazy fears;  He roads the desert of the years;    Rearing his cities in the sand,          He builds where even God has banned;    With green a continent he crowns,  And stars a wilderness with towns;    With paths the distances he snares;  His gyves of steel the great plain wears.            A child who takes a world for toy,  To build a nation or destroy,    His childish features frozen stern,  His manhood’s task he has to learn—    From feeble tribes to federate          One white and peace-encompassed State.    But if there be no goal to reach?…  The track lies open, dawns beseech!    Enough that he lay down his load  A little farther on the road.            So, toward undreamt-of destinies  He slouches down the centuries.