The spirit of this clime is tame;
The aspect of this race is cold:
To buy and sell their souls they frame:
The worship of the land is gold.
With these no sympathy may claim
Our ancient bards of mighty fame,
Our statesmen, and our warriors old.
By no dull ties of custom bound,
In that sweet land which first I knew,
A world within a world I found,
And from this sordid life withdrew.

By soul-enlarging genius led,

I traversed wide the realms of mind;
And communed with the living dead,
The deathless sages of mankind,
From out decay the springing flowers
Rise hallowed in that northern clime;
O, what a place of birth was ours,
The land of Memory and of Time!

SONNET.

THEMES for Australian poets, loveliest flowers
Fix sweet regards upon me: some with eye
Serious and thoughtful; others archly sly.
Amongst them do I spend delightful hours,
And marvel how unwearied Nature dowers
With grace these alien wilds. Blue as the sky
One gleams, all beauty: one, of fiery dye,
Outflames the sunset, and the sight o'erpowers.
Others of lowlier aspect, look demure :
Some calm as contemplation, and eve's star :
Others, as infancy, are bright and pure :
Many, more brisk, wear looks of Love, or War.
Even like the world of Men the many are-
Vain, grave and dull, conspicuous, or obscure.

NATIVE LAUGHTER.

THE savage stalks along the land,
And from him is shrill laughter tossed:
A cry that startles near at hand,
But soon in far off woods is lost.

How strange such alien voice resounds,
Deep in the wild-across the flood:
How hollow, joyless, seem the sounds
By his dark mates sole understood.
As if to mock him, in the tree,
With peals of laughter uncontrolled,
The Jay, of fun and frolic free,
Outrageously is blithe and bold.

PRIMITIVE NATIVE CONDITION.

ALAS! for human nature here,
In this Australian wild!
Unclothed, and miserably fed,
The mother and her child
Move on the Lubra darkly sad,
The Picaninny mild.

Like darkness dim in look and limb;
Not all devoid of grace;
Though from God's image, majesty,

How fallen far this race:

Alas! here for the human form,
And for the human face.

TULLAMARINE.*

TULLAMARINE, thou lovely flower,
I saw thee in a happy hour :
When first I gazed upon my boy
I saw thee with a mother's joy.
Methought thy beauty on me smiled:
And by thy name I called my child:
And thence alike with joy were seen
Both boy and flower, Tullamarine.

The lights in heaven appear, and go:
Both stars and flowers their seasons know:
Thus, in thy season, thou art seen,
Sweet earthly star, Tullamarine.

Soother of many a weary hour,

By mountain stream, in forest bower:
I gathered thee with choicest care,
And wore thee fondly in my hair.

Wide wandering through the woods away,
Where with thy bloom the ground was gay,
I called thee then the "flower of joy,"
Sweet namesake of my darling boy.

He grew he flourished by my side,
He ran, he gathered thee with pride;
But, woe is me! in evil hour

Death stole away my human flower.

* "Every flower I now see I imagine to be the native's flower, Tullama rine; simply for this incident. A gentleman mentioned to me that a beautiful flower was in its season out everywhere in the forests, and he at that time was a missionary amongst the natives, out in the Bush with them, when one of the Lubras had a little boy born, whom she named poetically and naturally enough after the then universally prevailing flower, Tullamarine. The boy died just when it could run about; and the distress of the bereaved mother may be imagined from the circumstance that she often, in the most perfect abstraction, would seat herself in solitary places, where she, indicating inward agony by outward action, frequently in meditative moods rubbed with her finger and thumb her temples until they dropped blood. The preceding lines are an English translation of her sorrow.”— MSS.

I wander in my sorrow's night,
My star is emptied of its light;
Thou, flower of joy, art changed to grief,
Thy dews, my tears are on thy leaf.

Therefore do I behold in vain
Thy beauty look on it with pain;
I see thee with an inward groan,
Because I look on thee, alone.

All things my sorrow seem to share,
There broods a sadness on the air ;
There hangs a gloom along the sky,
My boy is dead, and thou shouldst die.
Now for the joy which long I had,
The sight of thee must make me sad :
So in my path no more be seen,
But, deck his grave, Tullamarine.

Tullamarine, a month or twain,
Thy annual smiles must breed me pain ;
But, blunt for me thy sorrows keen,
Sweet flower of tears, Tullamarine.

TO THE DAISY.

ON AGAIN FINDING ONE IN AUSTRALIA, SEPT. 12, 1843.

MEETS the miner casual treasure,

Quick he looks for other store:

At this unexpected pleasure,

Round me thus I search for more :

Still, unlooked-for daisy, thou

Art my sole discovery now.

Years have passed since of thy kind,
One I in Australia saw;

And from that great joy of mind
Often could I solace draw:
Hope, with chance delights to meet,
Made by hallowing memories sweet.

Thou dost bring as from the dead
Visions of our English lark,
Warbling blithely overhead;

And the bird that cheers the dark :
In those seasons of delight,

When thou wert in daily sight.

When a bowery village lane,
Copse, or dell, or chiming brook,
Homely, well could entertain,
As an ever-open book;
Fancy, feeling, thoughts which grew,
Hourly, fed with wonders new.

All an exile's sadness seems,

Round thee, lonely flower, to brood:
As if food of far-off dreams
Sole sustained this solitude:
As a nature far apart

From home-happiness and heart.
Heart-reliance can be none

Where no life-long mate is seen :
Of the many left not one,

Gems of sward like emeralds green,

Waked by spring's benign regard,

Merry masquers of the sward!

Were this little alien flower,

That so near thee neighbouring dwells,

Our own cowslip, hour by hour,

From its pendent odorous cells,

What old greetings would there run
To thee in the breeze and sun.

Still its aspect brightens thine,
For resemblance it displays
To our little Celandine,

Golden star with gorgeous rays;
Whilst this violet, pink and blue,
Seems an old friend in a new.

Hence despond not-let us cherish
Offered heart's-food far or nigh:
What is garnered will not perish,
Whilst the "worship of a sigh
Pays the spirit to life's prime,
Scenes and seasons yoked with time.