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Arthur 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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