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| WHERE is Australia, singer, do you know? | |
| These sordid farms and joyless factories, | |
| Mephitic mines and lanes of pallid woe? | |
| Those ugly towns and cities such as these | |
| With incense sick to all unworthy power, | 5 |
| And all old sin in full malignant flower? | |
| No! to her bourn her children still are faring: | |
| She is a temple that we are to build: | |
| For her the ages have been long preparing: | |
| She is a prophecy to be fulfilled! | 10 |
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| All that we love in olden lands and lore | |
| Was signal of her coming long ago! | |
| Bacon foresaw her, Campanella, More, | |
| And Plato’s eyes were with her star aglow! | |
| Who toiled for Truth, whate’er their countries were, | 15 |
| Who fought for Liberty, they yearned for her! | |
| No corsair’s gathering ground, nor tryst for schemers, | |
| No chapman Carthage to a huckster Tyre, | |
| She is the Eldorado of old dreamers, | |
| The Sleeping Beauty of the world’s desire. | 20 |
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| She is the scroll on which we are to write | |
| Mythologies our own and epics new: | |
| She is the port of our propitious flight | |
| From Ur idolatrous and Pharaoh’s crew. | |
| She is our own, unstained, if worthy we, | 25 |
| By dream, or god, or star we would not see: | |
| Her crystal beams all but the eagle dazzle. | |
| Her wind-wide ways none but the strong-winged sail: | |
| She is Eutopia, she is Hy-Brasil, | |
| The watchers on the tower of morning hail! | 30 |
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| Yet she shall be as we, the Potter, mould: | |
| Altar or tomb, as we aspire, despair: | |
| What wine we bring shall she, the chalice, hold: | |
| What word we write shall she, the script, declare: | |
| Bandage our eyes, she shall be Memphis, Spain: | 35 |
| Barter our souls, she shall be Tyre again: | |
| And if we pour on her the red oblation, | |
| All o’er the world shall Asshur’s buzzards throng: | |
| Love-lit, her Chaos shall become Creation: | |
| And dewed with dream, her silence flower in song. | 40 |
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