My Country

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



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 distance,
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 to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But 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 threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we 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.

**

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 28, 2023

1:12 min read
325

Quick analysis:

Scheme aaaaaaxa baaaaacb adadaeae Bfafcxbx Bgxgaaaa bhchafbf
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,341
Words 242
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8

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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    "My Country" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/8106/my-country>.

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