With alien hearts to frame our laws
And cheat us as of old,
In vain our soil is rich, in vain
‘Tis seamed with virgin gold:
But the present only yields us nought,
The future only lours
Till we dare to be a people
In this Southern Land of Ours.
What would pygmean statesmen but
Our new-world prospects blast,
By chaining native enterprise
To Europe’s pauper past,
With all its misery for the mass,
And fraud-upholden powers;
But we’ll yet have men, – like Cromwell,
In this Southern Land of Ours.
And lo, the unploughed future, boys,
May yet be all our own,
If hearts that love their Native Land
Determine this alone:
To sow its years with crops of truth,
And border these with flowers,
Till we have a birth of heroes
In this Southern Land of Ours.
(Charles Harpur)
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, Flowers Poems, Gold Poems, Money & Wealth Poems, Past Poems, Truth Poems, People Poems, Birth Poems, Future Poems, Heroism Poems, Present PoemsBased on Keywords: seamed, lours, unploughed, new-world, chaining, pygmean