Post a poem

[alwaysjbj]

Stolen from enigmaticblues

Posting a poem... this is actually the one I have in my free text, but it is a beautiful poem and definitely one of my favourites (and FAR shorter than most of my other favourites.)


My Country


The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Dorothea Mackellar



So keep it going; go ahead and post your favourite poem!

Comments

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

That's beautiful!


Gabrielle

[downunderdeb.livejournal.com]

None more appropriate than now. She fairly well sums up Australia.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

That's lovely! I can even relate; eastern Oregon is a little like that!

[debris4spike]

Thank you - I have been seeing a selection of poems on unbridled_b and it is great for someone like me, who had no English lessons to catch up on all this great literature.

[lillianmorgan.livejournal.com]

What a lovely poem :) I love the idea of a sunburnt country - already I can see sunset and Uluru in my head...

[ayinhara.livejournal.com]

With the exception of the references to jewel-sea lots of the poem are resonant with the American Southwest. I've never been to Australia, but the poem fits beautifully with my conception of the country.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Lovely tribute to her country (and yours). I'm still trying to think of one...

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Beautiful.