19073 Fascination of Gray Australia 



goals honors, prizes, scholarships are used in 

 the schools, as in England, as substitutes for the real 

 aims of education. 



But granting all this, Australia is vast, patient, 

 fascinating! The roominess of the land, the grayness 

 and severity of bush life, the vistas of future national 

 greatness, all grip one and all find their reflex in 

 student thought and in the growing literature of the 

 Commonwealth, with its "stoical, even sardonic 

 melancholy." That Australia will be the birthplace 

 of great men in future, no one can doubt. 



From the Manchester Guardian of March 12, 1920, 

 I quote two bits of characteristic Australian verse: 



Somber, indomitable, wan, 



The juices dried, the glad youth gone, 



A little weary from his birth, 



His laugh the specter of a mirth. 



Bitter, beneath a bitter sky, 

 To nature he has no reply: 

 So drab and neutral is his day 

 He gleans a splendor in the gray, 

 And from his life's monotony, 

 He lifts a simple melody. 



No flower with fragile sweetness graced, 

 A lank weed wrestling with the waste, 

 Pallid of face and gaunt of limb, 

 The sweetness withered out of him. 



When earth so poor a banquet makes 

 His pleasure at a gulp he takes; 

 The feast is his, to the last crumb, 

 Drink while he can the drought will come. 



No discussion of the genius of Australia can fail to 

 take account of the influence of the Sydney Bulletin, 



C 227 ] 



