POETRY. OUR ANSWER.
WE do not want your Fatherland, Your starry veldt, your golden Rand ; We have an Empire stretching far Beyond the evening, morning star; And all within it like the sea, Majestic, equal, living, free.
Once ye were noble, men who died Sooner than crouch to tyrant's pride; For desert isle, for Marken sand, Content to quit your Fatherland; Ye shook the Spaniard's world-wide throne One strip of earth to call your own.
Why are you altered? Can it be That freemen grudge another free ? Ye gag our voices, hold us down Beneath your fortress' savage frown. Was it for this we freedom gave, Ourselves to dig our freedom's grave P Talk not of raid I It was disowned, In blood and prison the wrong atoned. Say not, ye seek apart to dwell! Ye love our ingots far too well. By all ye promised, all ye 'swore, Give us our right! we ask no more.
What do we ask ? To use the tongue That Hampden spoke, and Milton sang; To shape the statute, share the power That clips our freedom every hour ; Proud of a sovereign right to own No liege, no lord, but law alone.
Why do we ask it ? Is't to live Pleased with the dole that despots give; To blush, the shame that freemen feel Salaaming at a master's heel; And, bitterest sting of all, to know Onr own weak hands once dealt the blow.
Our bands, once weak ! Now one and all Are joining. Hark ! an Empire's call, That says, " Not ours the blood, or race, To brook ignoble hireling place." A stain on us is stain on them, Besmirching England's diadem.
Australia, Canada, cold and heat, New Zealand's isles the voice repeat, That everywhere beneath the sun All Saxon hearts in this are one; Born of the tameless Northern sea They must be, like its waters, free.
One must be first, yet but in name; A common flag is common fame : Snit on to us, they make a part Of freedom's universal heart : Heart whose vast framework, broad and high, Is all thy temple, Liberty. A. G. B.
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