Classic Poem

There came a lord out of England —
A youngster of good intent —
Who was blamed by the howling liars
For a message he never sent —
Tricked to a seeming blunder,
By a dark mysterious crew;
But, had he sent it to Sydney,
That message would not have been true.

I am writing not of the country,
Nor the slaves of workshop and den;
Not of the western farmers,
And O not of the Out-Back men:
This is the doom of a city
That would not " outgrow its stain "
But is fighting back in its madness
To leg-iron, rivet and chain.

Rivet, and gag and leg-iron,
Plausible lying, and Rant,
And the things that go with these things —
Unction and Smirk and Cant:
Cant and Smirk and Unction,
And the hireling tongue and pen,
The clacking of idle women
And the mouthing of bloodless men.

For Spite, or Place, or for Notice,
The meanest of tools they choose,
For the paltriest human passions
And the narrowest human " views " ;
Brotherhood, State, and Nation,
And the Future are set aside.
Ah God! for a folk so narrow
In a land so new and wide!

Sydney! without the spirit
To be a city indeed,
Nor even the soul of a township
That sticks to its own in need.
No hint of the kindly Granny,
Nor the mother's loving vaunt;
Not even the generous feeling
Of the withered maiden aunt.

Sydney, that's set in beauty,
Sydney, with health aglow —
No glimmering sense of duty
To the great land that made her so;
In one thing standing lonely
(To sum up the bitter whole)
Not the most soulless — the only
City without a soul!

But Australia's days are coming
To crawlers with eyes aslant,
With buckets of disinfectant
And hands on the gullets of Cant.
Too long we have waited, lenient,
Wasting a nation's time,
In imminent danger, allowing
A pitiful national crime.

She has had her years to learn wisdom,
Great chances to rise or fall —
She, of Australian cities
The least Australian of all!
Greedy, luxurious, corrupting
Her sisters one by one —
She must take the fifth place humbly,
For her octopus days are done.