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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse  »  106 . Freedom the Goddess (A. D. 1788)

Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

By Arthur W. Jose

106 . Freedom the Goddess (A. D. 1788)

WHERE through entangling bays

Wanders the Southern Sea

The Goddess stayed to gaze,

Her eyes a mystery.

With toil of hands unfree

She saw the land astir:

The mockers laughed at her.

‘What does fair Freedom here?

Is it the chain,’ they said,

‘Whose clank can please her ear?

Where the swung lash drips red,

Hopes she unstained to tread

Among these wretched ones?’

She said: ‘I seek my sons.

‘Even of these stones I raise

Children to liberty.

Yea, after many days

These that are bond shall be

Freer than you, the free.

Their blood, their sin, their groans

Are but mine altar stones.’

‘Can aught of good,’ they said,

‘Come out of Nazareth?’

Answered the goddess dread,

‘While any man draws breath

His free soul knows not death;

Through all disgrace and shame

His heart repeats my name.

‘Because they have known no good—

Because they have said: “We die

Unloved, a multitude

Forespent with misery,

As beasts die”—therefore I,

Freedom, that am divine,

Will take their land for mine:

‘Because they are cast aside,

Despised, and desolate,

Their labours shall abide,

Their sons shall make a State:

I, that take toll of Fate,

Among their later race

Will set my dwelling-place.

‘Mine is this continent,

Wherethrough my sons shall go.

Your world, by factions rent,

Shall watch this new world grow

From palms to southern snow,

From east to western sea,

One nation—mine for me!’