The Future of Australia
Sing us the Land of the Southern Sea,
The land we have called our own;
Tell us what harvest there shall be
From the seed that we have sown.
We love the legends of olden days,
The songs of the wind and wave;
And border ballads and minstrel lays,
And the poems Shakespeare gave,
The fireside carols and battle rhymes,
And romaunt of the knightly ring;
And the chant with hint of cathedral chimes,
Of him “made blind to sing.”
The tears they tell of our brethren wept,
Their praise is our fathers' fame;
They sing of the seas our navies swept,
Of the shrines that lent us flame.
But the Past is past, with all its pride,
And its ways are not our ways.
We watch the flow of a fresher tide
And the dawn of newer days.
Sing us the Isle of the Southern Sea,
The land we have called our own;
Tell us what harvest there shall be
From the seed that we have sown.
I see the Child we are tending now
To a queenly stature grown;
The jewels of empire on her brow,
And the purple round her thrown.
She feeds her household plenteously
From the granaries we have filled;
Her vintage is gathered in with glee
From the fields our toil has tilled.
The Old World's outcast starvelings feast,
Ungrudged, on her corn and wine;
The gleaners are welcome, from west and east,
Where her autumn sickles shine.
She clothes her people in silk and wool,
Whose warp and whose woof we spun;
And sons and daughters are hers to rule;
And of slaves, she has not one!
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poem by Mary Hannay Foott
Added by Poetry Lover
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