But ere the dawn their counsels wrought with me,
  And I went forth; alas that I so went
Under the great gum-forest canopy,
  The light on every silken filament
Of every flower, a quivering ecstasy
  Of perfect paleness made it; sunbeams sent
Up to the leaves with sword-like flash endued
Each turn of that grey drooping multitude.

I sought to look as in the light of one
  Returned.  ’Will this be strange to me that day? 
Flocks of green parrots clamorous in the sun
  Tearing out milky maize—­stiff cacti grey
As old men’s beards—­here stony ranges lone,
  Their dust of mighty flocks upon their way
To water, cloudlike on the bush afar,
Like smoke that hangs where old-world cities are.

Is it not made man’s last endowment here
  To find a beauty in the wilderness;
Feel the lorn moor above his pastures dear,
  Mountains that may not house and will not bless
To draw him even to death?  He must insphere
  His spirit in the open, so doth less
Desire his feres, and more that unvex’d wold
And fine afforested hills, his dower of old.

But shall we lose again that new-found sense
  Which sees the earth less for our tillage fair? 
Oh, let her speak with her best eloquence
  To me, but not her first and her right rare
Can equal what I may not take from hence. 
  The gems are left:  it is not otherwhere
The wild Nepean cleaves her matchless way,
Nor Sydney harbour shall outdo the day.

Adding to day this—­that she lighteth it.’ 
  But I beheld again, and as must be
With a world-record by a spirit writ,
  It was more beautiful than memory,
Than hope was more complete. 
                               Tall brigs did sit
  Each in her berth the pure flood placidly,
Their topsails drooping ’neath the vast blue dome
Listless, as waiting to be sheeted home.

And the great ships with pulse-like throbbing clear,
  Majestical of mien did take their way
Like living creatures from some grander sphere,
  That having boarded ours thought good to stay,
Albeit enslaved.  They most divided here
  From God’s great art and all his works in clay,
In that their beauty lacks, though fair it shows
That divine waste of beauty only He bestows.

The day was young, scarce out the harbour lights
  That morn I sailed:  low sun-rays tremulous
On golden loops sped outward.  Yachts in flights
  Flutter’d the water air-like clear, while thus
It crept for shade among brown rocky bights
  With cassia crowned and palms diaphanous,
And boughs ripe fruitage dropping fitfully,
That on the shining ebb went out to sea.

‘Home,’ saith the man self-banished, ’my son
  Shall now go home.’  Therewith he sendeth him
Abroad, and knows it not, but thence is won,
  Rescued, the son’s true home.  His mind doth limn
Beautiful pictures of it, there is none
  So dear, a new thought shines erewhile but dim,
’That was my home, a land past all compare,
Life, and the poetry of life, are there.’