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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

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LINES ON THE DEPARTURE OF EMIGRANTS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES.

BY T. CAMPBELL.

  On England’s shore I saw a pensive hand,
  With sails unfurl’d for earth’s remotest strand,
  Like children parting from a mother, shed
  Tears for the home that could not yield them bread;
  Grief mark’d each face receding from the view,
  ’Twas grief to nature honourably true. 
  And long, poor wand’rers o’er th’ ecliptic deep,
  The song that names but home shall bid you weep;
  Oft shall ye fold your flocks by stars above
  In that far world, and miss the stars ye love;
  Oft, when its tuneless birds scream round forlorn,
  Regret the lark that gladdens England’s morn. 
  And, giving England’s names to distant scenes,
  Lament that earth’s extension intervenes.

  But cloud not yet too long, industrious train,
  Your solid good with sorrow nursed in vain: 
  For has the heart no interest yet as bland
  As that which binds us to our native land? 
  The deep-drawn wish, when children crown our hearth,
  To hear the cherub-chorus of their mirth. 
  Undamp’d by dread that want may e’er unhouse,
  Or servile misery knit those smiling brows: 
  The pride to rear an independent shed,
  And give the lips we love unborrow’d bread;
  To see a world, from shadowy forests won,
  In youthful beauty wedded to the sun;
  To skirt our home with harvests widely sown,
  And call the blooming landscape all our own,
  Our children’s heritage, in prospect long. 
  These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong. 
  That beckon England’s wanderers o’er the brine,
  To realms where foreign constellations shine;
  Where streams from undiscovered fountains roll,
  And winds shall fan them from th’ Antarctic pole. 
  And what though doom’d to shores so far apart
  From England’s home, that ev’n the home-sick heart
  Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recross’d,
  How large a space of fleeting life is lost: 
  Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,
  And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,
  But jocund in the year’s long sunshine roam,
  That yields their sickle twice its harvest home.

  There, marking o’er his farm’s expanding ring
  New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring. 
  The grey-haired swain, his grandchild sporting round,
  Shall walk at eve his little empire’s bound,
  Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,
  And verdant rampart of Acacian thorn,
  While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,
  The orange-grove’s and fig-tree’s breath prevails;
  Survey with pride beyond a monarch’s spoil,
  His honest arm’s own subjugated