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.