"Bigbazza" > wrote in message
...

>
> '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-
> This wide brown land for me.
>
>
> The stark white ring-barked forests,
> 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 watch 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.


I've never heard the whole poem. It is apt.


Jen