| |
| NOW D’Entrecasteaux Channel opens fair, | |
| And Tasman’s Head lies on your starboard bow | |
| Huge rocks and stunted trees meet you where’er | |
| You look around; ’t is a bold coast enow. | |
| With foul wind and crank ship ’t were hard to wear: | 5 |
| A reef of rocks lies westward long and low. | |
| At ebb tide you may see the Actæon lie | |
| A sheer hulk o’er the breakers, high and dry. | |
| |
| ’T is a most beauteous Strait. The Great South Sea’s | |
| Proud waves keep holiday along its shore, | 10 |
| And as the vessel glides before the breeze, | |
| Broad bays and isles appear, and steep cliffs hoar | |
| With groves on either hand of ancient trees | |
| Planted by Nature in the days of yore: | |
| Van Dieman’s on the left and Bruné’s isle | 15 |
| Forming the starboard shore for many a mile. | |
| |
| But all is still as death! Nor voice of man | |
| Is heard, nor forest warbler’s tuneful song. | |
| It seems as if this beauteous world began | |
| To be but yesterday, and the earth still young | 20 |
| Van Dieman’s Land (tasmania). | |
| And unpossessed. For though the tall black swan | |
| Sits on her nest and stately sails along, | |
| And the green wild doves their fleet pinions ply, | |
| And the gray eagle tempts the azure sky, | 25 |
| |
| Yet all is still as death! Wild solitude | |
| Reigns undisturbed along that voiceless shore, | |
| And every tree seems standing as it stood | |
| Six thousand years ago. The loud wave’s roar | |
| Were music in these wilds. The wise and good | 30 |
| That wont of old, as hermits, to adore | |
| The God of Nature in the desert drear, | |
| Might sure have found a fit sojourning here. | |
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