3 min read
Слушать

Written In Australia

HE

DE 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;    Her form is sinuous and slim—    That lyric line of breast and limb!    But one there waits whose brown face glows,            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;            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,            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          A lone land waits with a hope serene—  My own land calls like a prisoner queen—  But oh, the long loping leagues between!

0
0
169
Give Award

Arthur Henry Adams

Arthur Henry Adams (6 June 1872 – 4 March 1936) was a journalist and author. He started his career in New Zealand, though he spent most of it in…

Other author posts

Comments
You need to be signed in to write comments

Reading today

Приметы потепления
Бодхисатва
Страдания юного Вертера краткое содержание
Венок сонетов 1
Ryfma
Ryfma is a social app for writers and readers. Publish books, stories, fanfics, poems and get paid for your work. The friendly and free way for fans to support your work for the price of a coffee
© 2024 Ryfma. All rights reserved 12+