Australian and Other Poems/Founding of New South Wales
FOUNDING OF NEW SOUTH WALES, A.D. 1788.
Upraise your standard! Never thro' the days
In nations' annals consecrate did rise
A beacon yielding to the straining eyes,
Of future-seeing men, more hopeful rays.
Let war-notes rise in loud but gladsome swell,
For never since the Orphean notes had birth,
Did music herald to the tribes of earth
More glorious advent than your cymbals tell.
And as the signs that marked her nascent hours,
So be the virtues of Australia's youth—
A trumpet voice to speak the words of truth,
A lion's force to brunt war's sternest powers;
While for the hour of peace her harp shall hold,
These notes that flow but for the fair and bold.