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 planes,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel seas,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me !
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot, gold bush 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 pittiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die;
But then the 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 greeness
That thickens as we gaze.
As opal hearted country,
A wilful lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though Earth holds many splendors,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.