Written In Australia,Arthur Henry Adams was a New Zealand-born poet, novelist and journalist who spent most of his time in Australia with brief sojourns in England and China. His early career direction appeared to be heading towards the legal profession but he soon found a niche in journalism instead, on the Wellington Evening Post.
He was, at about the same time, in collaboration with a composer called Alfred Hill and the pair of them produced several comic operas and cantatas. Shortly afterwards he started publishing his poetry.
Written In Australia by Arthur Henry Adams
Whipped by his glances truculent
The earth lies quivering and cowed.
My heart is hot with discontent:
I hate this haggard continent.But over the loping leagues of sea
My own land holding her arms to me—
But oh, the long loping leagues of sea.The grey old city is dumb with heat;
No breeze comes leaping, naked, rude,
Adown the narrow, high-walled street;
The evening oozes lassitude.
But over the edges of my town,
Swept in a tide that ne’er abates,
The riotous breezes tumble down;
My heart looks home, looks home where waits
The Windy City of the Straits!
The land lies desolate and stripped;
Across its waste has thinly strayed
A tattered host of eucalypt
From whose gaunt uniform is made
A ragged penury of shade.
But over my isles the forest drew
A mantle thick—save where a peak
Shows his grim teeth a-snarl—and through
The filtered coolness creek and creek,
Tangled in ferns, in whispers speak.
And there the placid great lakes are;
And brimming rivers proudly force
Their ice-cold tides. Here, like a scar,
Dry-lipped, a withered water-course
Crawls from a long-forgotten source.
My glance, home-gazing, scarce discerns
This listless girl, in whose dark hair
A starry red hibiscus burns;
Her pallid cheeks are like a pair
Of nuns, bloom-ravished, yet so fair.
And like a sin her warm lips flame
In her wan face; swift passions brim
In those brown eyes too soft for blame;
Her form is sinuous and slim—
That lyric line of breast and limb!
But one there waits whose brown face glows,
Whose cheeks with Winter’s kisses smart—
The flushing petals of a rose.
Of earth and sun she is a part;
Her brow is Greek and Greek her heart.
At love she laughs a faint disdain;
Her heart no weakly one to charm;
Robust and fragrant as the rain,
The dark bush soothed her with his balm,
The mountains gave her of their calm.
Her fresh young figure, lithe and tall,
Her radiant eyes, her brow benign,
She is the peerless queen of all—
The maid, the country, that I shrine
In this far-banished heart of mine!
And over the loping leagues of green
A lone land waits with a hope serene—
My own land calls like a prisoner queen—
But oh, the long loping leagues between!
