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.