[Editor: An untitled poem, written from the point of view of a home-sick immigrant. Published in The Australian, 17 May 1833.]
Original Poetry.
[By Henry Bailey.]
As through the everlasting “Bush,”
I take my weary flight,
How oft, thy flowers, Australia! blush
In beauty on my sight.
And yet I cannot help but sigh,
The while their beauties start,
To feel that though they strike the eye,
They do not touch the heart.
Alas, they have no tale to tell,
To me of other times,
Like those far homelier flowers that dwell
In colder days and climes.
They never shone with pleasing gem,
To charm me at my play;
Or made me in a field of them
As fresh and bright as they.
They never bloomed round any place
Where joy and I have rov’d;
Nor did they ever deck with grace
The brow of her I lov’d.
They never gently stole away
The anguish of my mind —
By sorrow left in wild dismay, —
And made it more refin’d.
Nor have their glories ever grown
Entwin’d with minstrel’s fame;—
In sooth they are so little known
They scarcely have a name.
Then let me be surrounded by
The flowers of earlier years
Transplanted from my home; and I
Will water them with tears.
Source:
The Australian (Sydney, NSW), 17 May 1833, p. 3
[Editor: Corrected “homlier” to “homelier”.]
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