The Charter’s read; the rites are o’er; The trumpet’s blare and cannon’s roar Are silent, and the flags are furled; But not so ends the task to build Into the fabric of the world The substance of our hope fulfilled-- To work as those who greatly have divined The lordship of a continent assigned As God’s own gift for service of mankind. O People of the onward will, Unit of Union greater still Than that to-day hath made you great, Your true Fulfilment waiteth there, Embraced within the larger fate Of Empire ye are born to share-- No vassal progeny of subject brood, No satellite shed from Britain’s plenitude, But orbed with _her_ in one wide sphere of good! _James Brunton Stephens._ RUSSELL CCXXII THE BIRTH OF AUSTRALIA Not ’mid the thunder of the battle guns, Not on the red field of an Empire’s wrath, Rose to a nation Australasia’s sons, Who trod to greatness Industry’s pure path. Behold a people through whose annals runs No damning stain of falsehood, force or wrong,-- A record clear as light, and sweet as song, Without one page the patriot’s finger shuns! Where ’mid the legends of old Rome, or Greece, Glows such a tale? Thou canst not answer, Time! With shield unsullied by a single crime, With wealth of gold and still more golden fleece, Forth stands Australia, in her birth sublime,-- The only nation from the womb of Peace! _Percy Russell._ LAWSON CCXXIII THE WAR OF THE FUTURE There are boys to-day in the city slum and the home of wealth and pride Who’ll have one home when the storm is come, and fight for it side by side, Who’ll hold the cliffs ’gainst the armoured hells that batter a coasted town, Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down; And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day, Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away-- Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun, And know the sorrow that has no tears when a battle is lost or won,-- As a mother or wife, in the years to come, will kneel, mild-eyed and white, And pray to God in her darkened home for the ‘men in the fort to-night.’ But, O! if the cavalry charge again as they did when the world was wide, ’Twill be grand in the ranks of a thousand men in that glorious race to ride, And strike for all that is true and strong, for all that is grand and brave, And all that ever shall be, so long as man has a soul to save.