MY COUNTRY - Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954) - 28 Jul 1932 (original) (raw)

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Thu 28 Jul 1932 - Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954)
Page 59 - MY COUNTRY

The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes,

Of ordered woods and gardens,

Is running in your veins;

Strong love of grey-blue distance,

Brown streams, and soft, dim sides —

I know, but cannot share it,

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains.

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

Her beauty and her terror,

The wide brown land for me.

The stark white ring-barked forests,

The sapphire-misted mountains,

The hot gold hush of noon.

Green tangle of the brushes,

And orchids deck the trectops,

And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country !

When sick at heart, around us

But then the grey clouds gather,

Core of my heart, my country !

Land of the Rainbow Gold.

For flood and fire and famine

She pays us back threefold.

Over the thirsty paddocks

The filmy veil of greenness

That thickens as we gaze.

All you, who have not loved her,

You will not understand —

Though earth holds many splendors,

I know to what brown country

My homing thoughts will fly.