Poems (Storrie)/A Protest

by Agnes Louisa Storrie

For works with similar titles, see A Protest.

A Protest.

Oh! ye who blame Australia,
 Who tauntingly upbraid
Her woods for lack of colour,
 Her trees that cast no shade,

Her birds that know no music,
 Her flowers without perfume,
And the drear and ghastly phantoms
 That breed amid the gloom

Of spectral forests, gray and wild,
 Where crawls a shrunken stream,
And weird, uncanny creatures
 Disport, as in a dream.

Oh! ye who draw such pictures,
 Whose spirits thus recoil,
Are aliens! aliens!—Never one
 Is native to the soil,

For we, thine own, Australia—
 Bred of thee, blood and bone—
We thrill responsive to thy voice,
 Answer thee tone for tone.

We find no lack of colour
 Where thy great forests spread
Their burnished foliage, crested here
 With gold, and there with red.

For us the winds are laden
 With exquisite perfume,
Delicate boronia scents,
 And breath of wattle-bloom.

Spices of white clover,
 That clusters at our feet,
And airs from wild clematis stars
 Sun-warm and honey-sweet.

Leagues of red epaeris,
 And aromatic whiffs
From myriad creepers blossoming
 About the broken cliffs.

And we have ears so fashioned
 That music seems to wake
When mopokes, through the scented dusk
 Their soft indictments make.

Our spirits answer clearly
 When, liquid as a brook,
That bubbles over golden sands,
 In some fern-fringed nook,

The laughing- jack salutes the dawn
 With clear and gurgling note,
That falls, as if in silver drops,
 From his impetuous throat.

And parrots whistling cheerily,
 From green and rustling heights,
And curlews wailing, wailing,
 Through long, quiet, brooding nights.

All speak to us in patois,
 That love alone imparts,
And aliens cannot master
 The idiom of our hearts.

To us, when in the gloaming
 The drooping she-oaks sing
Their low and plaintive music,
 What thrilling echoes ring!

What yearnings pent within us,
 What sweet, yet tragic strains
Find voice in these Æolian harps,
 And tremble through our veins.

For us, the voice that murmurs
 From out the dark-tressed tree,
In silhouette against the faint
 Sky's twilight mystery,

Is an imprisoned spirit,
 That whispers to our own
Oh! softly, softly! as a dream,
 That visions the unknown.

For us, where 'mid the boulders,
 Strewn wide from cliff and scar,
A hand's-breadth space of verdure
 Shines like an emerald star,

And lures a velvet footstep,
 A lissom form to spring
All noiseless from obscurity,
 And browse, none hindering.

This life has all the beauty
 Of untamed woodland grace,
We feel in it the naivete
 That permeates the place.

The charm of things unsullied,
 The luring mystery
That lies in an unopened bud,
 A maiden's modesty.

A phantom thing, impalpable,
 That words may not reveal,
The spirit of Australia
 That we Australians feel.

What think ye of our sunsets?
 Where have you ever seen
Such crystal depths of amethyst,
 Such limpid seas of green.

What flower that ever budded
 On earth's enamelled breast
Can match the magic blossom
 That opens in the west

And over fields of azure
 Its rosy petals sheds,
And those untrodden pathways
 With golden pollen spreads.

Then fades in lovely pallors,
 To grays, remote and far,
While from its withered calyx
 Springs up a living star.

Oh! ye who blame Australia,
 Who find her harsh and crude,
And meaningless and gloomy,
 Oh! have ye never stood

Upon a plain, moon-lighted
 And limitless as thought,
Where winds fall dumb, and languish
 As in enchantment caught,

Oh! have ye stood—I ask it,
 And in that silent place,
Your soul, alone and naked,
 Regarded face to face.

Sing your own songs, Oh! aliens,
 Portray your native scenes,
But let Australia's children
 Tell what Australia means.