And summing all the blessings God has given,
Put up his patriarchal prayer to Heaven,
That when his bones shall here repose in peace,
The scions of his love may still increase,
And o’er a land where life has ample room,
In health and plenty innocently bloom.
Delightful land, in wildness ev’n
benign,
The glorious past is ours, the future
thine!
As in a cradled Hercules, we trace
The lines of empire in thine infant face.
What nations in thy wide horizon’s
span
Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by
man!
What spacious cities with their spires
shall gleam.
Where now the panther laps a lonely stream.
And all but brute or reptile life is dumb!
Land of the free! thy kingdom is to come,
Of states, with laws from Gothic bondage
burst,
And creeds by charter’d priesthood’s
unaccurst;
Of navies, hoisting their emblazon’d
flags,
Where shipless seas now wash unbeacon’d
crags;
Of hosts review’d in dazzling files
and squares,
Their pennon’d trumpets breathing
native airs,
For minstrels thou shalt have of native
fire.
And maids to sing the songs themselves
inspire;
Our very speech, methinks, in after time.
Shall catch th’ Ionian blandness
of thy clime;
And whilst the light and luxury of thy
skies
Give brighter smiles to beauteous woman’s
eyes, }
The Arts, whose soul is love, shall all
spontaneous rise. }
Untrack’d in deserts lies the marble
mine,
Undug the ore that midst thy roofs shall
shine;
Unborn the hands—but born they
are to be—
Fair Australasia, that shall give to thee
Proud temple domes, with galleries winding
high, }
So vast in space, so just in symmetry,
}
They widen to the contemplating eye,
}
With colonnaded aisles in lone array,
And windows that enrich the flood of day
O’er tesselated pavements, pictures
fair,
And niched statues breathing golden air,
Nor there, whilst all that’s seen
bids Fancy swell,
Shall Music’s voice refuse to seal
the spell;
But choral hymns shall wake enchantment
round,
And organs blow their tempests of sweet
sound.
Meanwhile, ere Arts triumphant reach their
goal,
How blest the years of pastoral life shall
roll
Ev’n should some wayward hour the
settler’s mind
Brood sad on scenes for ever left behind,
Yet not a pang that England’s name
imparts,
Shall touch a fibre of his children’s
hearts;
Bound to that native world by nature’s
bond,
Full little shall their wishes rove beyond
Its mountains blue, and melon-skirted
streams.
Since childhood loved and dreamt of in
their dreams.
How many a name, to us uncouthly wild,
Shall thrill that region’s patriotic
child,
And bring as sweet thoughts o’er