Now, while Orion, flaming south, doth set
A shining foot on hills of wind and wet --
Far haughty hills beyond the fountains cold
And dells of glimmering greenness manifold —
While August sings the advent of the Spring, And in the calm is heard September's wing, The lordly voice of song I ask of thee, High, deathless radiance — crowned Calliope! What though we never hear the great god's lays Which made all music the Hellenic days — What though the face of thy fair heaven beams Still only on the crystal Grecian streams — What though a sky of new, strange beauty shines Where no white Dryad sings within the pines: Here is a land whose large, imperial grace Must tempt thee, goddess, in thine holy place! Here are the dells of peace and plenilune, The hills of morning and the slopes of noon; Here are the waters dear to days of blue, And dark-green hollows of the noontide dew; Here lies the harp, by fragrant wood-winds fanned, That waits the coming of thy quickening hand! And shall Australia, framed and set in sea, August with glory, wait in vain for thee? Shall more than Tempe's beauty be unsung Because its shine is strange — its colours young? No! by the full, live light which puts to shame The far, fair splendours of Thessalian flame — By yonder forest psalm which sinks and swells Like that of Phocis, grave with oracles — By deep prophetic winds that come and go Where whispering springs of pondering mountains flow — By lute-like leaves and many-languaged caves, Where sounds the strong hosanna of the waves, This great new majesty shall not remain Unhonoured by the high immortal strain! Soon, soon, the music of the southern lyre Shall start and blossom with a speech like fire! Soon, soon, shall flower and flow in flame divine Thy songs, Apollo, and Euterpe, thine! Strong, shining sons of Delphicus shall rise With all their father's glory in their eyes; And then shall beam on yonder slopes and springs The light that swims upon the light of things. And therefore, lingering in a land of lawn, I, standing here, a singer of the dawn, With gaze upturned to where wan summits lie Against the morning flowing up the sky — Whose eyes in dreams of many colours see A glittering vision of the years to be — Do ask of thee, Calliope, one hour Of life pre-eminent with perfect power, That I may leave a song whose lonely rays May shine hereafter from these songless days.
For now there breaks across the faint grey range
The rose-red dawning of a radiant change. A soft, sweet voice is in the valleys deep, Where darkness droops and sings itself to sleep. The grave, mute woods, that yet the silence hold Of dim, dead ages, gleam with hints of gold. Yon eastern cape that meets the straitened wave — A twofold tower above the whistling cave — Whose strength in thunder shields the gentle lea, And makes a white wrath of a league of sea, Now wears the face of peace; and in the bay The weak, spent voice of Winter dies away. In every dell there is a whispering wing, On every lawn a glimmer of the Spring; By every hill are growths of tender green — On every slope a fair, new life is seen; And lo! beneath the morning's blossoming fires, The shining city of a hundred spires, In mists of gold, by countless havens furled, And glad with all the flags of all the world!