A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey
In the field uniform of modern wars,
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.
The lines describe a nation with trees that are dull green and a desolate grey. These trees resemble soldiers in modern wars, wearing field uniforms. The hills of this nation are darkened, like the endless paws of a demolished Sphinx or a stone lion that has been worn away.
They call her a young country, but they lie:
She is the last of lands, the emptiest,
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast
Still tender but within the womb is dry.
The lines suggest that Australia thought claim by others is a youthful nation but it’s a falsehood. The land is the final of all lands but it is the most barren. The poet goes on to compare Australia with the imagery of a woman past her menopause whose breast remains delicate yet her womb is devoid of life. Here, Australia is similar to that condition of a woman where Australia has reached certain level of generation but there are no observations of growth and life within.
Without songs, architecture, history:
The emotions and superstitions of younger lands,
Her rivers of water drown among inland sands,
The river of her immense stupidity
The lines suggest that Australia is a nation that lacks cultural richness and intellectual depth. The absence of songs, architecture, and history leaves only the emotions and superstitions of a youthful land. The rivers that should flow with knowledge and wisdom are instead lost in the dry sands of ignorance. The poet expresses his disheartening witness to such immense stupidity.
Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive
Whose boast is not: “we live” but “we survive”,
A type who will inhabit the dying earth.
The poet traces the people who come from Cairns to Perth populating the monotonous tribes that are flooded with these individuals. They are the ultimate men who have arrived, not boasting about living, but about surviving. They represent a type of people who will inhabit a dying earth.
And her five cities, like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores.
Here the poet talks about the five cities which are like a festering wounds draining her resources. They resemble vast parasite robber-states where second-hand Europeans timidly populate the edges of unfamiliar shores.
Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
The Arabian desert of the human mind,
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come,
The poet then goes on to say that there are those of us who willingly return home from the overwhelming complexity of modern thought. They seek the simplicity and clarity of the human mind akin to the vast expanse of the Arabian desert. They hold onto hope believing that even from these deserts prophets may still emerge.
Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes
Which is called civilization over there.
The lines suggest that in that barren wasteland a savage and vibrant spirit emerges untamed by the green hills. It eludes the skepticism of the learned and the meaningless chatter of those who claim to be cultured apes. They call it civilization, but it is far removed from the essence of true life.
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