The Australian

ONCE 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.