"Jen" > wrote in message
...
>
> "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
>


What is 'apt'....Jen ? Do you like it..It was one that I was also taught in
school many years ago..

--
Bigbazza (Barry)..(The Boy from Oz)