Now, crowned with more than perishable bays,
Immortal in your country's love and praise,
Ye too have portion in this day of days!

And who sowed where now we reap,

ye
Whose waiting eyes, now sealed in sleep,
Beheld far off with prescient sight

This triumph of rejoicing lands-
Yours too the day! for though its light
Can pierce not to your folded hands,
These shining hours of advent but fulfil
The cherished purpose of your constant will
Whose onward impulse liveth in us still.

Still lead thou vanward of our line
Who, shaggy, massive, leonine,

Couldst yet most finely phrase the event-
For if a Pisgah view was all
Vouchsafed to thine uncrowned intent,
The echoes of thy herald-call

Not faintlier strive with our saluting guns,
And at thy words through all Australia's sons
The 'crimson thread of kinship' redder runs.

But not the memory of the dead,
How loved soe'er each sacred head,
To-day can change from glad to grave
The chords that quire a Nation born-
Twin-offspring of the birth that gave,

When yester-midnight chimed to morn,
Another age to the Redeemer's reign,
Another cycle to the widening gain
Of Good o'er Ill and Remedy o'er Pain.

Our sundering lines with love o'ergrown,
Our bounds the girdling seas alone—
Be this the burden of the psalm

That every resonant hour repeats,
Till day-fall dusk the fern and palm
That forest our transfigured streets,

And night still vibrant with the note of praise Thrill brotherhearts to song in woodland ways, When gum-leaves whisper o'er the camp-fire's blaze.

The Charter's read; the rites are o'er;
The trumpet's blare and cannon's roar
Are silent, and the flags are furled;
But not so ends the task to build
Into the fabric of the world

The substance of our hope fulfilled—
To work as those who greatly have divined
The lordship of a continent assigned
As God's own gift for service of mankind.

O People of the onward will,
Unit of Union greater still

Than that to-day hath made you great,
Your true Fulfilment waiteth there,
Embraced within the larger fate

Of Empire ye are born to share—

No vassal progeny of subject brood,

No satellite shed from Britain's plenitude,

But orbed with her in one wide sphere of

good!

James Brunton Stephens.

CCXXII

THE BIRTH OF AUSTRALIA

NOT 'mid the thunder of the battle guns,
Not on the red field of an Empire's wrath,
Rose to a nation Australasia's sons,

Who trod to greatness Industry's pure path.
Behold a people through whose annals runs
No damning stain of falsehood, force or wrong,-
A record clear as light, and sweet as song,
Without one page the patriot's finger shuns!

Where 'mid the legends of old Rome, or Greece,
Glows such a tale? Thou canst not answer, Time!
With shield unsullied by a single crime,
With wealth of gold and still more golden fleece,
Forth stands Australia, in her birth sublime,—
The only nation from the womb of Peace!

Percy Russell.

CCXXIII

THE WAR OF THE FUTURE

THERE are boys to-day in the city slum and the home of wealth and pride

Who'll have one home when the storm is come, and fight for it side by side,

Who'll hold the cliffs 'gainst the armoured hells that batter a coasted town,

Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down;

And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day,

Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away-

Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun,

And know the sorrow that has no tears when a

battle is lost or won,

As a mother or wife, in the years to come, will kneel, mild-eyed and white,

And pray to God in her darkened home for the 'men in the fort to-night.'

But, O! if the cavalry charge again as they did when the world was wide,

'Twill be grand in the ranks of a thousand men in that glorious race to ride,

And strike for all that is true and strong, for all that

is grand and brave,

And all that ever shall be, so long as man has a soul

to save.

He must lift the saddle, and close his 'wings,' and shut his angels out,

And steel his heart for the end of things, who'd ride with the stockman scout,

When the race is rode on the battle track, and the waning distance hums,

And the shelled sky shrieks or the rifles crack like stockwhips amongst the gums

6

And the straight' is reached, and the field is 'gapped,' and the hoof-torn sward grows red

With the blood of those who are handicapped with iron and steel and lead;

And the gaps are filled, though unseen by eyes, with the spirit and with the shades

Of the world-wide rebel dead who'll rise and rush with the Bush Brigades.

All creeds and trades will have soldiers there-give every class its due

And there'll be many a clerk to spare for the pride of the jackeroo.

They'll fight for honour, and fight for love, and a few will fight for gold,

For the devil below, and for God above, as our fathers fought of old;

And some half-blind with exultant tears, and some stiff-lipped, stern-eyed,

For the pride of a thousand after-years and the old eternal pride.

The soul of the world they will feel and see in the chase and the grim retreat

They'll know the glory of victory-and the grandeur of defeat.

They'll tell the tales of the nights before' and the tales of the ship and fort,

Till the sons of Australia take to war as their fathers took to sport,

Their breath come deep and their eyes grow bright at the tales of chivalry,

And every boy will want to fight, no matter what cause it be

When the children run to the doors and cry, 'O, mother, the troops are come!'

And every heart in the town leaps high at the first loud thud of the drum.

They'll know, apart from its mystic charm, what music is at last,

When, proud as a boy with a broken arm, the regiment marches past;

And the veriest wreck in the drink-fiend's clutch, no

matter how low or mean,

Will feel, when he hears the march, a touch of the man he might have been.

And fools, when the fiends of war are out and the city skies aflame,

Will have something better to talk about than a sister's or brother's shame,

Will have something nobler to do by far than to jest at a friend's expense,

Or to blacken a name in a public bar or over a backyard fence.

And this you learn from the libelled past (though its methods were somewhat rude),

A nation's born when the shells fall fast, or its lease of life renewed;

We in part atone for the ghoulish strife—for the crimes of the peace we boast

And the better part of a people's life in the storm comes uppermost.

Henry Lawson.

CCXXIV

A FAMILY MATTER

COME, my hearties-work will stand-
Here's your Mother calling!—

Wants us all to lend a hand,

And go out Uncle-Pauling.