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Arthur Henry Adams - The AustralianArthur Henry Adams - The Australian
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ONCE more this Autumn-earth is ripe,    Parturient of another type.     While with the Past old nations merge   His foot is on the Future’s verge.     They watch him, as they huddle, pent,           Striding a spacious continent,     Above the level desert’s marge   Looming in his aloofness large.     No flower with fragile sweetness graced—   A lank weed wrestling with the waste;             Pallid of face and gaunt of limb,   The sweetness withered out of him;     Sombre, indomitable, wan,   The juices dried, the glad youth gone.     A little weary from his birth,           His laugh the spectre of a mirth,     Bitter beneath a bitter sky,   To Nature he has no reply.     Wanton, perhaps, and cruel. Yes,   Is not his sun more merciless?             So drab and neutral is his day,   He finds a splendour in the grey,     And from his life’s monotony   He draws a dreary melody.     When earth so poor a banquet makes           His pleasures at a gulp he takes;     The feast is his to the last crumb:   Drink while he can…the drought will come.     His heart a sudden tropic flower,   He loves and loathes within an hour.             Yet you who by the pools abide,   Judge not the man who swerves aside;     He sees beyond your hazy fears;   He roads the desert of the years;     Rearing his cities in the sand,           He builds where even God has banned;     With green a continent he crowns,   And stars a wilderness with towns;     With paths the distances he snares;   His gyves of steel the great plain wears.             A child who takes a world for toy,   To build a nation or destroy,     His childish features frozen stern,   His manhood’s task he has to learn—     From feeble tribes to federate           One white and peace-encompassed State.     But if there be no goal to reach?…   The track lies open, dawns beseech!     Enough that he lay down his load   A little farther on the road.             So, toward undreamt-of destinies   He slouches down the centuries.
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