Dreamers too [poem by E. J. Brady]

[Editor: This poem by E. J. Brady was published in Bells and Hobbles (1911).]

Dreamers too.

We have lived long years for a white-robed dream —
The dream of Australia fair,
With the vine and corn by her hill and stream,
And the sunshine in her hair;
And the plain and strand of our native land,
They were ever calling there.

We have toiled and won from the forest’s maze
The boon of a white man’s home;
We have reared our sons to their manhood days,
And seen them settle, or roam.
And the young brood, too, as they spread and grew,
Has dreamed ’neath the sapphire dome.

Shall we cease to dream? Not so, my son,
Blue-eyed and Australian-born,
We will dream our dream till the signal gun
Proclaimeth the battle morn,
Till the war cry thrills through the woods and hills,
And the women wait forlorn.

We will dream our dream; but a waking dream
Of the White Man, strong and free,
Full armed to meet with a strength supreme,
The foes of his liberty,
If the loud shells sing and the rifles ring
In the storm of the days to be.

Source:
E. J. Brady, Bells and Hobbles, Melbourne: George Robertson & Co., 1911, p. 128

Editor’s notes:
morn = morning

’neath = (vernacular) beneath

proclaimeth = (archaic) proclaims