'Tis a new thing for Australia that the waters to her bear
One who seeks not strength of sunshine, or the breath of healing air;
One who reeks not of her riches, nor remembers she is fair;
One who land and houses, henceforth, holdeth not, for evermore;
Coming for such narrow dwelling as the dead need, to the shore
Named aforetime by the spirit to receive the garb it wore.

'Tis a strange thing for Australia that her name should be the name
Breathed ere death by one who loved her, claiming, with a patriot's claim,
Earth of her as chosen grave-place; rather than the lands of fame;
Rather than the Sacred City where a sepulchre was sought
For the noblest hearts of Europe; rather than the Country fraught
With the incense of the altars whence our household gods were brought.

'Tis a proud thing for Australia, while the funeral-prayers are said,
To remember loving service, frankly rendered by the dead;
How he strove, amid the nations, evermore to raise her head.
How in youth he sang her glory, as it is, and is to be,
Called her “Empress,” while they held her yet as base-born, over sea,
Owned her “Mother,” when her children scarce were counted with the free!

How he claimed of King and Commons that his birthland should be used
As a daughter not an alien; till the boon, so oft refused,
Was withheld, at last, no longer; and the former bonds were loosed.
How the scars of serfdom faded. How he led within the light
Of her fireside Earth's Immortals; chrism-touched from Olympus' height;
Whom gods loved; for whom the New Faith, too, has guest-rooms garnished bright.

'Tis a great thing for Australia; that her child of early years,
Shared her path of desert-travel, bread of sorrow, drink of tears,
Holding by her to these hill-tops, whence her Promised Place appears.
Titles were not hers to offer as the meed of service done;
Rank of peer or badge of knighthood, star or ribbon, she had none;
But she breathes a mother's blessing o'er the ashes of her son.

The Melbourne International Exhibition

Argument.

I. - The House being ready, Victoria prepares to receive the nations whom she has invited. They approach the various countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, of the American continent, the Australian colonies, and those of Polynesia, some of them greater than any which ever paid tribute to Rome, or did homage to a mediaeval monarch, and their products superior to those which in olden times were fit gifts from one king to another.

II. - Victoria salutes the other Australian colonies, and asks them to unite with her in greeting her other guests. They then welcome the various countries of Asia, Africa (Egypt to Caffraria, &c.), America (the South American Republics, Empire of Brazil, Dominion of Canada, and the United States of North America); then France, Spain, and Portugal; Italy, Greece, Russia, Switzerland; then Holland and Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Norway, and Sweden; then Britain.

III. - The triumphs of Peace and of Toil.

IV. - Aspirations for the future of Australia, that she may be happy, a generous friend, but, if need be, a formidable enemy.

I.

Ceased is the sound of the chisel, and hushed is the hammer's ring,
And the echoes that haunted the empty halls for a while have taken wing;
And the doors are open, and overhead are a thousand flags unfurled,
While with music and song to the House she has built Victoria welcomes the world.
For the nations she bade with friendly voice have hearkened to her behest,
And treasure-laden, o'er land and sea, comes many an honoured guest,
Daughters of cultured Europe, deigning her day to grace,
Children of antique Asia, Africa's dusky race,
America's mighty offspring and they of Australia's line,
And they of the Thousands Islands set where Pacific waters shine.
Oh, never a Roman triumph, nor court of mightiest Suzerain
Hath gathered such as have sailed to her. Nor gifts like to theirs have lain
At the feet of Wisdom's favoured one, when the Princes came from far,
And the swarthy Queen to the Great Sea steered by the light of the still pole star.

II.

Welcome, O fair five Sisters unto your Sister's side!
Greet we this day together them who come from far and wide.
Come ye, aflame with jewels, and each with veilèd face
Whence bright eyes beam upon us like stars from cloud-swept space,
We wonder o'er the labours your slender hands have done
In ancient Asian cities, brown daughters of the sun!

And thou who once wast Pharoah's, and thou whose palm-thatched kraals
For centuries made marvel of bold De Gama's sails,
And all that dwell betwixt you, whate'er your race and name,
Who seek our shores in kindness, we thank you that you came.

And them who claim the treasures erewhile Pizarro's prize.
And her who crowned Braganza the worthy and the wise,
And Canada we welcome; the loyal and the free,
And thee, O great republic, with rule from sea to sea,
Who bravedst for our lost ones the fatal frozen main,
Thou who hast fed our famished and wept above our slain.

Fair France, we greet thee fondly as our Crusader sires
Thy knightly sons saluted by Acre's stubborn spires!
O brave in war! none brighter in peaceful arts doth shine!
Arachne's fairy fingers are not more deft than thine!

And ye, the Goth's twin-daughters, of stately mien and speech,
Spain and her queenly neighbour, a loving hand to each?
Long may thy sons be worthy the Cid's illustrious name;
And thine another Lusiad write on the rolls of fame!

Italia! as we greet thee, our hearts are all aglow,
What centuries of glory thou knowst and shalt know!
Thine are the Roman eagles, the lilies Florentine,
The sea-wed city's lion, the Church's Conquering Sign!

And Greece, we do thee reverence, who on Olympian seat
Art goddess yet; earth's greatest but learners at thy feet!

Now gladly we receive thee, within unguarded gate,
O upward-toiling Russia, whose lamp, though lit but late,
Already cheered thy children. What berg-blocked sea is thine!
God grant thee open water beyond its Arctic line!

And welcome here, Helvetia, from heights where peace abides
Beyond the wreck-strewn floodmark of battle's crimson tides:
Thou pliest, busy-fingered, each harmless handicraft,
Yet, ready in thy quiver there rests the patriot shaft.

And ye whom frugal Flanders has dowered with all her store,
Her old cathedral cities, her freedom won of yore,
When by the hands that raised them, her dykes asunder torn,
Swift poured the burghers' vengeance for Egmont and for Horn;
And thou whose peerless Princess, pure as thy Baltic foam,
Is dear in ancient Windsor as in her Danish home,
(For where thy raven reached not, thy dove hath found her rest,
And in the heart of England hath made herself a nest!)
Thou, dweller by the Danube, thou, keeper of the Rhine;
Thou, blue-eyed Scandinavia, with fragrant crown of pine;
All, all who followed Odin, the leader and the priest,
From bondage and from darkness in some forgotten East,
And tilled the trackless forest, and tamed the wild North Sea,
Account us as your kindred, for kin, in truth, are we!

And now to her we hasten, with daughterly embrace,
To whom young isles do homage, and empires old give place,
And every zone pays tribute of wealth, and earth, and wave,
The refuge of the alien, the champion of the slave!
On triple throne unshaken as adamantine wall,
Long may'st thou sit, Britannia, dear mother of us all!

III.

Mighty ones, who have hither borne your trophies manifold,
We honour them who have earned you these, as we honour your great of old,
Every worker with brain or hand, the artist, the artisan,
Whether he ride at an army's head, or march in the nameless van.
For bright is the ruddy shield of Mars, and sweet is the Sungod's lyre;
But Labour beareth the world aloft on shoulders that will not tire.

IV.

Thou, who givest the eye to see, and the ready hand to do,
And a nation's place in the earth's fair space, give us Thy blessing, too!
We hear the cool Antarctic winds in the golden wheatfields pipe,
And the chant the swart Kanaka sings where the rustling cane grows ripe,
And we ask of Thee, who hast dowered our land with the kindly sun and soil
Which fill with fruitage of farthest climes the hopeful hands of toil,
That ever in love we may nurture, too, the people which dwelt apart,
When they seek new life from our Younger World and a home within her heart.
And if, perchance, from the eaves of peace and the sheltering olive bough,
Our sons shall sail to a stormy sea and the shock of the mail-clad prow,
May they show that not in vain they have borne the stress of the tropic day,
Or lain, toil-spent, in the miner's tent, or made in the wilds a way.

The Australiad - (A Poem For Children.)

'Twas brave De Quiros bent the knee before the King of Spain,
And “sire,” he said, “I bring thy ships in safety home again
From seas unsailed of mariner in all the days of yore,
Where reefs and islets, insect-built, arise from ocean's floor.
And, sire, the land we sought is found, its coasts lay full in view
When homeward bound, perforce, I sailed, at the bidding of my crew.
Terra Australis1 called I it; and linked therewith the name
Of Him who guideth, as of old, in cloud and starry flame.
And grant me ships again,” he said, “and southward let me go,
A new Peru may wait thee there, another Mexico.”

A threadbare suitor, year by year, “There is a land,” said he;
While King and Court grew weary of this old man of the sea;
For there were heretics to burn, and Holland to subdue,
And England to be humbled, (which this day remains to do,)
O land he named, but never saw, his memory revere!
The gallant disappointed heart, let him be honoured here!

Meanwhile the hardy Dutchmen came, as ancient charts attest,
Hartog, and Nuyts, and Carpenter, and Tasman, and the rest,
But found not forests rich in spice, nor market for their wares,
Nor servile tribes to toil o'ertasked 'mid pestilential airs,
And deemed it scarce worth while to claim so poor a continent,
But with their slumberous tropic isles thenceforward were content.

And then came Dampier, who, erewhile, upon the Spanish Main
For silver-laden galleons lurked, and great was his disdain,
Good ships, beside, from France were sent, good ships and gallant crews,
With Marion and D'Entrecasteaux and the far-famed La Perouse.
And still, of all who sought or saw, the voyages were vain,
Australia ne'er was farm for boers nor mission-field for Spain,
Nor fleur-de-lys nor tricolor was ever planted here,
And Britain's flag to hoist was not for hands of buccaneer.

But to our lovely Eastern coast, led by auspicious stars,
Came Cook, in the Endeavour, with his little band of tars,
Who straight on shores of Botany old England's ensign reared,
With mighty dim of musketry and noise of them that cheered.
And none of all his noble fleets who sixty years was king
A prize so goodly ever brought as that small ship did bring!

And who was he, the FIRST to find Australia passing fair?
One who aforetime well had served his country otherwhere:
Who to the heights of Abraham up the swift St. Lawrence led,
When on the moonless battle-eve the midnight oarsmen sped.
No worthier captain British deck before or since hath trod,
He “never feared the face of man,” but feared alway his God.
His crew he cherished tenderly, and kept his honour bright,
For with the helpless blacks he dealt as if they had been white.

A boy, erewhile, of lowly birth, self-taught, a poor man's son,
But a hero and a gentleman, if ever there was one!
And when at last, by savage hands, on wild Owyhee slain,
He left a deathless memory, a name without a stain!

'Tis but a hundred years ago, as nearly as may be,
Since good King George's vessel first anchored in Botany.
A hundred years! Yet, oh, how many changes there have been!
Unclasp thy volume, History, and say what thou hast seen.

“Old England and her colonies stand face to face as foes,
And now their orators inveigh, and now their armies close.”
In vain, our mother-land, for once thy sword is drawn in vain,
Allies and enemies alike, thy children are the slain.
Though, save as victor, never 'twas thy wont to quit the field,
Relenting filled thy valiant heart and thou wast fain to yield.
Ah, well for loss of those fair States might King and Commons mourn!
There lay, in south, a goodly bough from England's rose-tree torn!
But now how deep its roots have struck, how stately stands the stem,
How lovely on its branches leaf and flower and dewy gem!
New life from that sore severance to our sister-scion came,
God speed thee, young America, we glory in thy fame!

“The storm that shook the Western World now eastward breaks anew,
And, oh, how black the tempest is which blotteth out the blue!
And over thee, ill-fortuned France, what floods resistless roll,
A tidal wave of blood no pitying planet may control!

“Like Samson toiling blind and bound to furnish food for those
Who light withheld and liberty, and mocked at all his woes,
So have thy people held their peace, so laboured, so have borne
The burden serfdom ever bears, the sorrow and the scorn.
But as with groping giant-hands he seized the pillars twain
And made Philistia's land one house of mourning for the slain,
So rise they, frenzied, at the last, by centuries of wrong,
And wreak a vengeance dreadful as their sufferings have been long,
The vile Bastille is overthrown, the Monarchy lies low,
The fetters of the Feudal Age are broken at a blow!

“Of Poland parted for a prey dire Nemesis shall tell
When o'er the dead in Cracow's vault shall ring Oppression's knell!
Now Erin from her Sister-Isle awhile was fain to part,
For Strongbow's arrow rankled long within her wounded heart;
And long by desecrated fane and fireless hearth she wailed,
Where brutal Ireton's Herod-host their murderous pikes had trailed.
Here shine the names she holdeth dear; and prize them well she may,
Past soldiers of a Frankish prince, or peers of Castlereagh;
The gifted ones who pled for her 'gainst bigotry and pride,
The gallant ones who died for her when young Fitzgerald died!”

Enough, enough, forbear to trace the record of the age,
Where elder nations are inscribed, through each distressful page:

But hearken how, for once, at least, without an army's aid,
A people's lines the lines of her who holds the South, were laid!

Five thousand leagues of ocean 'twixt the old home and the new,
And lodging strait and scanty fare the weary voyage through.
And toil and hardship safely past, and crossed the perilous main,
Never to tread on English ground 'mid English friends again!
Yet men were found to dare it all, men, ay, and women too,
(Not only those exiled perforce, who oftimes rose anew,
Out-cast upon new earth, with hope, and heart, and vigour given,
By fresh surroundings, and His grace who bids the lost to Heaven),
The brave, the fair, the gently-born, and Labour's life-long thrall,
Within those circling seas of ours there was a place for all.

For patient hands the woods to fell, the new-formed fields to till,
The huts to build, the scanty flocks and herds to guard from ill.
For bolder spirits, to forsake the sea-board settlement,
And learn the secret of the land where never white man went,
Through mountain-pass, and forest dark, and wide unsheltered plain,
Through fiery heat of summer, and through frost, and flood, and rain,
Unheeding thirst, or hunger, or the shower of savage spears,
What soldiers e'er were braver than Australian pioneers?
What though it was by axe, and plough, and miner's oft-edged tool,
And tending sheep and kine through weary years, of hardship full,
The only victories we boast were by our fathers won?
The men who won them had prevailed where feats of arms were done!
Three generations born of her our Country now can tell,
And son, and sire, and grandsire, all in turn have served her well;
Not only with the sinewy arm, the hardened hand of toil,
That wrest their wealth from rifted rock and forest-cumbered soil,
By love of order and of law; by proferred boon to all
Of learning, in the township school and in the college hall;
By liberal leisure, well-bestowed, for sports of land and wave;
And by the faith preserved to us God to the Elders gave!

And now Britannia's household send her, greetings from beside
The icy streams of Canada, and islands scattered wide
Betwixt the two Americas, from Africa's sea-marge,
And where the race of Aurungzebe held empire rich and large,
And where amid New Zealand fern the English skylarks build,
And rosy children's sun-burnt hands with English flowers are filled,
And from our own Australia too, and all unite to say,
“Bind us to thee with stronger bonds than those we own today,
Give to our sons a place with thine, for each to each is peer,
And let them share thy councils, and the dangers that endear,
And what the Olden Realm has been the Newer Realm shall be,
With a place in every freeman's heart and a port in every sea!”