| Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918. |
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| 201. Russia |
| | | By Elliott Napier |
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| IMPLACABLE as are thy arctic floes; | |
| Grim and gigantic as thy mountain height; | |
| Girt with thy pines for spindles and the light | |
| Of pale auroras for thy stars; to those | |
| Who know thee not thou seem’st as one who goes | 5 |
| Unvex’d by Wrong, nor swerves to help the Right, | |
| A grey Lachesis of the Northern night, | |
| Stark as thy steppes and colder than thy snows. | |
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| But we—we know thee now, Ally and Friend! | |
| True as thy Baltic Spars and tried by fire, | 10 |
| Thy seeming coldness hides a courage high, | |
| A stern resolve to do, endure and die, | |
| So that the holy cause of thy desire— | |
| Thy cause and ours—shall triumph in the end. | |
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