The Dominion

She is not yet; but he whose earThrills to that finer atmosphereWhere footfalls of appointed things,Reverberant of days to be,Are heard in forecast echoings,Like wave-beats from a viewless sea —Hears in the voiceful tremors of the skyAuroral heralds whispering, "She is nigh."

She is not yet; but he whose sightForeknows the advent of the light,Whose soul to morning radiance turnsEre night her curtain hath withdrawn,And in its quivering folds discernsThe mute monitions of the dawn,With urgent sense strained onward to descryHer distant tokens, starts to find Her nigh.

Not yet her day. How long "not yet"! . .There comes the flush of violet!And heavenward faces, all aflameWith sanguine imminence of morn,Wait but the sun-kiss to proclaimThe Day of The Dominion born.Prelusive baptism! — ere the natal hourNamed with the name and prophecy of power.

Already here to hearts intense,A spirit-force, transcending sense,In heights unsealed, in deeps unstirred,Beneath the calm, above the storm,She waits the incorporating wordTo bid her tremble into form.Already, like divining-rods, men's soulsBend down to where the unseen river rolls; —

For even as, from sight concealed,By never flush of dawn revealed,Nor e'er illumed by golden noon,Nor sunset-streaked with crimson bar,Nor silver-spanned by wake of moon,Nor visited of any star,Beneath these lands a river waits to bless(So men divine) our utmost wilderness, —

Rolls dark, but yet shall know our skies,Soon as the wisdom of the wiseConspires with nature to discloseThe blessing prisoned and unseen,Till round our lessening wastes there glowsA perfect cone of broadening green, —Till all our land Australia Felix called,Become one Continent-Isle of Emerald; —

So flows beneath our good and illA viewless stream of Common Will,A gathering force, a present might,That from its silent depths of gloomAt Wisdom's voice shall leap to light,And hide our barren feuds in bloom,Till, all our sundering lines with love o'ergrown,Our bounds shall be the seas alone.