My Country

Tuesday 10 February 2009 5 responses

© 1904 Dorothea MacKellar




The love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance, brown streams and soft, dim skies-
I know but cannot share it, my love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror- the wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests, all tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains, the hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops, and ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us we see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather, and we can bless again
The drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine she pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks, watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness that thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country, a wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her, you will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours, wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.



Click here to view how Australians saw the bushfires - February 2009

5 responses: to “ My Country so far...

  • Mariuca 12.2.09
     

    Oh I can feel Aussie's pain through the words! Hang in there! :)

  • Kim 13.2.09
     

    yay Mariuca
    you're first ;)
    and you have ads on all my blogs..
    thanks ever so much xxx
    ps I had to put this poem in for all those Aussies affected by the fires :(

    thanks for your kind words Tony :)

  • Mariuca 15.2.09
     

    I have ads at all three blogs Kim? Yahoooooo!!!! I have all ur blogs under my fave EC list, easier to keep track of my ads he he! Happy Sunday, love and hugs! :):):)

  • Anonymous 18.2.09
     

    thanks for sharing...
    Regards,
    SBL - Engineering services

  • Lynda Lehmann 20.2.09
     

    Well done and very poignant in view of the fires. The land will regenerate, but for the shattered human lives, it will be harder.

    So much tragedy...