the soul is soothed and satisfied, so, placed before the frightful grandeur
of these barren hills, it drinks in their sentiment of defiant ferocity,
and is steeped in bitterness.

Australia has rightly been named the Land of the Dawning. Wrapped in
the midst of early morning, her history looms vague and gigantic.
The lonely horseman riding between the moonlight and the day
sees vast shadows creeping across the shelterless and silent plains,
hears strange noises in the primeval forest, where flourishes a vegetation
long dead in other lands, and feels, despite his fortune, that the trim
utilitarian civilisation which bred him shrinks into insignificance
beside the contemptuous grandeur of forest and ranges coeval with an age
in which European scientists have cradled his own race.

There is a poem in every form of tree or flower, but the poetry which lives
in the trees and flowers of Australia differs from those
of other countries. Europe is the home of knightly song, of bright deeds
and clear morning thought. Asia sinks beneath the weighty recollections
of her past magnificence, as the Suttee sinks, jewel burdened,
upon the corpse of dread grandeur, destructive even in its death.
America swiftly hurries on her way, rapid, glittering, insatiable
even as one of her own giant waterfalls. From the jungles of Africa,
and the creeper-tangled groves of the Islands of the South,
arise, from the glowing hearts of a thousand flowers,
heavy and intoxicating odours -- the Upas-poison which dwells in
barbaric sensuality. In Australia alone is to be found the Grotesque,
the Weird, the strange scribblings of Nature learning how to write.
Some see no beauty in our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume,
our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who have not yet learned