[Editor: This poem, regarding the vote for the federation of the Australian colonies, was published in the Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser (Maryborough, Qld.), 2 September 1899.]
Erase the Border Line!
[By John Knight.]
Men! if your hope is to bridge main with main,
Rise to this holy work, and be ye true,
Erase the border line! and forthwith hew
A pathway for yourselves, nor turn again,
While the winds whisper — “Onward! Federate!”
Stretches afar th’ untrodden wilderness,
Whence soft low voices ask — “What can ye less?
Arise! bind East to West and State to State!”
Lo! this spring morning comes with mute caress,
Declaring — “If ye wish to build a Name,
Building, with opened eyes, a lasting frame,
Work in the fine-wrought texture this word — Yes!”
Then, surely shall your dreams of greatness grow,
And growing, quicken to an ampler flow.
August 31, 1899.
Source:
Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser (Maryborough, Qld.), 2 September 1899, p. 3
Editor’s notes:
hew = to chop, cut, or hack (especially regarding the chopping of wood and the chopping down of trees, such as used in the phrase “a hewer of wood and a carrier of water”); to form or shape something (especially by heavy or rough chopping or cutting, such as a roughly-hewn granite statue)
th’ = (vernacular) the
ye = (archaic; dialectal) you (still in use in some places, e.g. in Cornwall, Ireland, Newfoundland, and Northern England; it can used as either the singular or plural form of “you”, although the plural form is the more common usage)
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