This Southern Land of Ours
With alien hearts to frame our laws
And cheat us as of old,
In vain our soil is rich, in vain
’Tis seamed with virgin gold:
But the present only yields us nought,
The future only lours
Till we dare to be a people
In this Southern Land of Ours.
What would pygmean statesmen but
Our new-world prospects blast,
By chaining native enterprise
To Europe’s pauper past,
With all its misery for the mass,
And fraud-upholden powers;
But we’ll yet have men, - like Cromwell,
In this Southern Land of Ours.
And lo, the unploughed future, boys,
May yet be all our own,
If hearts that love their Native Land
Determine this alone:
To sow its years with crops of truth,
And border these with flowers,
Till we have a birth of heroes
In this Southern Land of Ours.
Altre opere di Charles Harpur...
