James Lister Cuthbertson

Who knows it not, who loves it not, The long and steady swing, The instant dip, the iron grip,

Down to the lighthouse pillar The rolling woodland comes, Gay with the gold of she-oaks

Australia! land of lonely lake And serpent-haunted fen; Land of the torrent and the fire

I twined a wreath of heather white To bind my lady's hair, And deemed her locks in even light

'Tandem venias precamur Nube candentes humeros amictus Augur Apollo.'

This is the maiden Solitude, too fair For mortal eyes to gaze on, she who dwells In the lone valley where the water wells

The morning star paled slowly, the Cross1 hung low to the sea, And down the shadowy reaches the tide came swirling free, The lustrous purple blackness of the soft Australian night

Give us from dawn to dark Blue of Australian skies, Let there be none to mark

Old Billy, battered, brown and black With many days of camping, Companion of the bulging sack,

Gold of the tangled wilderness of wattle, Break in the lone green hollows of the hills, Flame on the iron headlands of the ocean,