In a Southern Garden

Dorothea Mackeller 1885 (Point Piper, Sydney) – 1968 (Randwick)



WHEN the tall bamboos are clicking to the restless little breeze,   
And bats begin their jerky skimming flight,   
And the creamy scented blossoms of the dark pittosporum trees,   
Grow sweeter with the coming of the night.   
  
And the harbour in the distance lies beneath a purple pall,           
And nearer, at the garden’s lowest fringe,   
Loud the water soughs and gurgles ’mid the rocks below the wall,   
Dark-heaving, with a dim uncanny tinge   
  
Of a green as pale as beryls, like the strange faint-coloured flame   
That burns around the Women of the Sea:           
And the strip of sky to westward which the camphorlaurels frame,   
Has turned to ash-of-rose and ivory—   
  
And a chorus rises valiantly from where the crickets hide,   
Close-shaded by the balsams drooping down—   
It is evening in a garden by the kindly water-side,           
A garden near the lights of Sydney town!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

43 sec read
75

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB XCXC DEDE FGFG
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 903
Words 145
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4

Dorothea Mackeller

Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar (better known as Dorothea Mackellar), OBE was an Australian poet and fiction writer. Her poem My Country is widely known in Australia, especially its second stanza, which begins: "I love a sunburnt country/A land of sweeping plains,/Of ragged mountain ranges,/Of droughts and flooding rains." more…

All Dorothea Mackeller poems | Dorothea Mackeller Books

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