From Core of My Heart by Dorothy Mackellar
“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!
The stark white ring-barked forests
All tragic ’neath 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 treetops,
And ferns the crimson soil.
Core of my heart, my country —
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die …
And 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 three-fold …
Over the thirsty paddocks
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as you 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.”
