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Saturday, January 26, 2013

Australia Day 26th January

Today on Australia Day, I give honor to a great Australian writer and poet.

Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar
This is her most famous poem about our country.


My Country

The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Sydney 1890

 My own great-grandparents, around 1870.

God Bless the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit. 


10 comments:

  1. Geart poem - great land. God bless you all on this Australia Day.

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  2. Simply beautiful. Although I've never visited, I, too, love that great Southland of the Holy Spirit.

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  3. What a beautiful, romantic description of your homeland!

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  4. What a beautiful, romantic description of your homeland!

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  5. What an awesome poem about your country. Nice seeing old pictures too. Happy Australian day:)

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  6. Hi Crystal, belated Happy Australia Day, great poem, thanks for sharing it with us.

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  7. Nice poem...like the old pictures of Sydney...neat to see them

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  8. This is so beautiful.. Happy Australian Day to you all.. Lovely Land.

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  9. Very interesting photos Crystal Mary. HAPPY Australian Day. Sandie

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  10. Happy Australian Day....How nice to have a photo of your great grandparents...such wonderful memories for you. The poem is very descriptive of a wonderful land.

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Dio ti ama così siamo connessi.