True America's Message

Bernard O'Dowd 1866 (Beaufort) – 1953



OUR manlier spirits hear and will obey   
 The Word YOU waft Australia o’er the sea—   
‘Be true, be brave, be merciful, be free!’   
Not you, who, braggart, sent this wan array   
Of hell-ships vomiting their Will-to-Slay,         5
 These armoured Hates and pallid Envies we,   
 ’Mid rattled mobs and flags hysteric, see   
Tarnish the chaste horizon of our Bay:   
  
But YOU we hear, our Comrades of the Cause,   
 Who face hyæna Mammon in his den:         10
   And YOU, who dared your seas of blood to spill   
To drag the swooning slave from vampire jaws:   
 Yea, YOU who freed unborn Australia, when   
   You singed King George’s beard at Bunker’s Hill.

 

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

33 sec read
30

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBAABBA XCDXCD
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 676
Words 111
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6

Bernard O'Dowd

Bernard Patrick O'Dowd was an Australian activist, educator, poet, journalist, and author of several law books and poetry books. O'Dowd worked as an assistant-librarian and later Chief Parliamentary Draughtsman in the Supreme Court at Melbourne for 48 years; he was also a co-publisher and writer for the radical paper Tocsin. Bernard O'Dowd lived to age 87. more…

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