POETRY.

CORE OF MY HEART.

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 dis-

tance, 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— The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests All tragic 'neath the moon, The sapphire-misted moun- tains,

The hot gold hush of noon—

Green tangle of the brushes Where lithe lianas coil, And orchids deck the tree-tops, And ferns the crimson soil. Core of myheart, my country— Her pitiless blue sky, When sick at heart, around us We see the cattle die . . . . And 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 three- fold . . . .

Over the thirsty paddocks Watch, after many days, The filmy veil of greenness That thickens as you

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.

DOROTHEA MACRELLAIL.