The Sydney International Exhibition

(The poem which won the prize offered by the proprietors of the 'Sydney Morning Herald'.)

Now, while Orion, flaming south, doth set

A shining foot on hills of wind and wet

Far haughty hills beyond the fountains cold

And dells of glimmering greenness manifold

While August sings the advent of the Spring,

And in the calm is heard September's wing,

The lordly voice of song I ask of thee,

High, deathless radiance crowned Calliope!

What though we never hear the great god's lays

Which made all music the Hellenic days

What though the face of thy fair heaven beams

Still only on the crystal Grecian streams

What though a sky of new, strange beauty shines

Where no white Dryad sings within the pines:

Here is a land whose large, imperial grace

Must tempt thee, goddess, in thine holy place!

Here are the dells of peace and plenilune,

The hills of morning and the slopes of noon;

Here are the waters dear to days of blue,

And dark-green hollows of the noontide dew;

Here lies the harp, by fragrant wood-winds fanned,

That waits the coming of thy quickening hand!

And shall Australia, framed and set in sea,

August with glory, wait in vain for thee?

Shall more than Tempe's beauty be unsung

Because its shine is strange its colours young?

No! by the full, live light which puts to shame

The far, fair splendours of Thessalian flame

By yonder forest psalm which sinks and swells

Like that of Phocis, grave with oracles

By deep prophetic winds that come and go

Where whispering springs of pondering mountains flow

By lute-like leaves and many-languaged caves,

Where sounds the strong hosanna of the waves,

This great new majesty shall not remain

Unhonoured by the high immortal strain!

Soon, soon, the music of the southern lyre

Shall start and blossom with a speech like fire!

Soon, soon, shall flower and flow in flame divine

Thy songs, Apollo, and Euterpe, thine!

Strong, shining sons of Delphicus shall rise

With all their father's glory in their eyes;

And then shall beam on yonder slopes and springs

The light that swims upon the light of things.

And therefore, lingering in a land of lawn,

I, standing here, a singer of the dawn,

With gaze upturned to where wan summits lie

Against the morning flowing up the sky

Whose eyes in dreams of many colours see

A glittering vision of the years to be

Do ask of thee, Calliope, one hour

Of life pre-eminent with perfect power,

That I may leave a song whose lonely rays

May shine hereafter from these songless days.

For now there breaks across the faint grey range

The rose-red dawning of a radiant change.

A soft, sweet voice is in the valleys deep,

Where darkness droops and sings itself to sleep.

The grave, mute woods, that yet the silence hold

Of dim, dead ages, gleam with hints of gold.

Yon eastern cape that meets the straitened wave

A twofold tower above the whistling cave

Whose strength in thunder shields the gentle lea,

And makes a white wrath of a league of sea,

Now wears the face of peace; and in the bay

The weak, spent voice of Winter dies away.

In every dell there is a whispering wing,

On every lawn a glimmer of the Spring;

By every hill are growths of tender green

On every slope a fair, new life is seen;

And lo! beneath the morning's blossoming fires,

The shining city of a hundred spires,

In mists of gold, by countless havens furled,

And glad with all the flags of all the world!

These are the shores, where, in a dream of fear,

Cathay saw darkness dwelling half the year!

These are the coasts that old fallacious tales

Chained down with ice and ringed with sleepless gales!

This is the land that, in the hour of awe,

From Indian peaks the rapt Venetian saw!

Here is the long grey line of strange sea wall

That checked the prow of the audacious Gaul,

What time he steered towards the southern snow,

From zone to zone, four hundred years ago!

By yonder gulf, whose marching waters meet

The wine-dark currents from the isles of heat,

Strong sons of Europe, in a far dim year,

Faced ghastly foes, and felt the alien spear!

There, in a later dawn, by shipless waves,

The tender grasses found forgotten graves.

Far in the west, beyond those hills sublime,

Dirk Hartog anchored in the olden time;

There, by a wild-faced bay, and in a cleft,

His shining name the fair-haired Northman left;

And, on those broad imperial waters, far

Beneath the lordly occidental star,

Sailed Tasman down a great and glowing space

Whose softer lights were like his lady's face.

In dreams of her he roved from zone to zone,

And gave her lovely name to coasts unknown

And saw, in streaming sunset everywhere,

The curious beauty of her golden hair,

By flaming tracts of tropic afternoon,

Where in low heavens hangs a fourfold moon.

Here, on the tides of a resplendent year,

By capes of jasper, came the buccaneer.

Then, then, the wild men, flying from the beach,

First heard the clear, bold sounds of English speech;

And then first fell across a Southern plain

The broad, strong shadows of a Saxon train.

Near yonder wall of stately cliff, that braves

The arrogance of congregated waves,

The daring son of grey old Yorkshire stood

And dreamed in a majestic solitude,

What time a gentle April shed its showers,

Aflame with sunset, on the Bay of Flowers.

The noble seaman who withheld the hand,

And spared the Hector of his native land

The single savage, yelling on the beach

The dark, strange curses of barbaric speech.

Exalted sailor! whose benignant phrase

Shines full of beauty in these latter days;

Who met the naked tribes of fiery skies

With great, divine compassion in his eyes;

Who died, like Him of hoary Nazareth,

That death august the radiant martyr's death;

Who in the last hour showed the Christian face

Whose crumbling beauty shamed the alien race.

In peace he sleeps where deep eternal calms

Lie round the land of heavy-fruited palms.

Lo! in that dell, behind a singing bar,

Where deep, pure pools of glittering waters are,

Beyond a mossy, yellow, gleaming glade,

The last of Forby Sutherland was laid

The blue-eyed Saxon from the hills of snow

Who fell asleep a hundred years ago.

In flowerful shades, where gold and green are rife,

Still rests the shell of his forgotten life.

Far, far away, beneath some northern sky

The fathers of his humble household lie;

But by his lonely grave are sapphire streams,

And gracious woodlands, where the fire-fly gleams;

And ever comes across a silver lea

The hymn sublime of the eternal sea.

On that bold hill, against a broad blue stream,

Stood Arthur Phillip in a day of dream:

What time the mists of morning westward rolled,

And heaven flowered on a bay of gold!

Here, in the hour that shines and sounds afar,

Flamed first old England's banner like a star;

Here, in a time august with prayer and praise,

Was born the nation of these splendid days;

And here this land's majestic yesterday

Of immemorial silence died away.

Where are the woods that, ninety summers back,

Stood hoar with ages by the water-track?

Where are the valleys of the flashing wing,

The dim green margins and the glimmering spring?

Where now the warrior of the forest race,

His glaring war-paint and his fearless face?

The banks of April and the groves of bird,

The glades of silence and the pools unstirred,

The gleaming savage and the whistling spear,

Passed with the passing of a wild old year!

A single torrent singing by the wave,

A shadowy relic in a mountain cave,

A ghost of fire in immemorial hills,

The whittled tree by folded wayside rills,

The call of bird that hides in hollows far,

Where feet of thunder, wings of winter are

Of all that Past, these wrecks of wind and rain,

These touching memories these alone remain!

What sun is this that beams and broadens west?

What wonder this, in deathless glory dressed?

What strange, sweet harp of highest god took flame

And gave this Troy its life, its light, its name?

What awful lyre of marvellous power and range

Upraised this Ilion wrought this dazzling change?

No shining singer of Hellenic dreams

Set yonder splendour by the morning streams!

No god who glimmers in a doubtful sphere

Shed glory there created beauty here!

This is the city that our fathers framed

These are the crescents by the elders named!

The human hands of strong, heroic men

Broke down the mountain, filled the gaping glen,

Ran streets through swamp, built banks against the foam,

And bent the arch and raised the lordly dome!

Here are the towers that the founders made!

Here are the temples where these Romans prayed!

Here stand the courts in which their leaders met!

Here are their homes, and here their altars yet!

Here sleep the grand old men whose lives sublime

Of thought and action shine and sound through time!

Who worked in darkness onward fought their ways

To bring about these large majestic days

Who left their sons the hearts and high desires

Which built this city of the hundred spires!

A stately Morning rises on the wing,

The hills take colour, and the valleys sing.

A strong September flames beyond the lea

A silver vision on a silver sea.

A new Age, 'cast in a diviner mould',

Comes crowned with lustre, zoned and shod with gold!

What dream is this on lawny spaces set?

What miracle of dome and minaret?

What great mute majesty is this that takes

The first of morning ere the song-bird wakes?

Lo, this was built to honour gathering lands

By Celtic, Saxon, Australasian hands!

These are the halls where all the flags unfurled

Break into speech that welcomes all the world.

And lo, our friends are here from every zone

From isles we dream of and from tracts unknown!

Here are the fathers from the stately space

Where Ireland is and England's sacred face!

Here are the Norsemen from their strong sea-wall,

The grave, grand Teuton and the brilliant Gaul!

From green, sweet groves the dark-eyed Lusians sail,

And proud Iberia leaves the grape-flushed vale.

Here are the lords whose starry banner shines

From fierce Magellan to the Arctic pines.

Here come the strangers from the gates of day

From hills of sunrise and from white Cathay.

The spicy islands send their swarthy sons,

The lofty North its mailed and mighty ones.

Venetian keels are floating on our sea;

Our eyes are glad with radiant Italy!

Yea, North and South, and glowing West and East,

Are gathering here to grace our splendid feast!

The chiefs from peaks august with Asian snow,

The elders born where regal roses grow,

Come hither, with the flower of that fair land

That blooms beyond the fiery tracts of sand

Where Syrian suns their angry lustres fling

Across blind channels of the bygone spring.

And on this great, auspicious day, the flowers

Of labour glorify majestic hours.

The singing angel from the starry sphere

Of dazzling Science shows his wonders here;

And Art, the dream-clad spirit, starts, and brings

From Fairyland her strange, sweet, glittering things.

Here are the works man did, what time his face

Was touched by God in some exalted place;

Here glows the splendour here the marvel wrought

When Heaven flashed upon the maker's thought!

Yea, here are all the miracles sublime

The lights of Genius and the stars of Time!

And, being lifted by this noble noon,

Australia broadens like a tropic moon.

Her white, pure lustre beams across the zones;

The nations greet her from their awful thrones.

From hence the morning beauty of her name

Will shine afar, like an exceeding flame.

Her place will be with mighty lords, whose sway

Controls the thunder and the marching day.

Her crown will shine beside the crowns of kings

Who shape the seasons, rule the course of things,

The fame of her across the years to be

Will spread like light on a surpassing sea;

And graced with glory, girt with power august,

Her life will last till all things turn to dust.

To Thee the face of song is lifted now,

O Lord! to whom the awful mountains bow;

Whose hands, unseen, the tenfold storms control;

Whose thunders shake the spheres from pole to pole;

Who from Thy highest heaven lookest down,

The sea Thy footstool, and the sun Thy crown;

Around whose throne the deathless planets sing

Hosannas to their high, eternal King.

To Thee the soul of prayer this morning turns,

With faith that glitters, and with hope that burns!

And, in the moments of majestic calm

That fill the heart in pauses of the psalm,

She asks Thy blessing for this fair young land

That flowers within the hollow of Thine hand!

She seeks of Thee that boon, that gift sublime,

The Christian radiance, for this hope of Time!

And Thou wilt listen! and Thy face will bend

To smile upon us Master, Father, Friend!

The Christ to whom pure pleading heart hath crept

Was human once, and in the darkness wept;

The gracious love that helped us long ago

Will on us like a summer sunrise flow,

And be a light to guide the nation's feet

On holy paths on sacred ways and sweet.