It was on this day in 1908 that Dorothea Mackellar’s beloved poem, “My Country” was first published (The Spectator in London printed it under its original title, “Core of My Heart”).
A 23-year-old (and clearly homesick) Mackellar wrote the ode to Australia while on a visit to England. Her connection to – and love of – her homeland is evident, and the words she wrote continue to move Australians to this day.
Everyone knows the second stanza, but the rest of the poem might not be as familiar. But even if you’ve never heard them before, if you’re an Australian the words will still strike a chord.
The lines, “Her pitiless blue sky, When sick at heart, around us, We see the cattle die,” are particularly poignant right now, in the middle of a crushing drought that is devastating farmers all around this wide brown land. Let’s just hope the second part of that stanza comes comes to life soon, too: “But then the grey clouds gather, And we can bless again, The drumming of an army, The steady, soaking rain”.
Here’s the marvellous poem in its entirety, just in case you’ve never read it all – or at least, not for a while. If you don’t well up a little while reading the last stanza, you must not be an Aussie!
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 drought and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
A stark white ring-barked forest
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.
Dorothea Mackellar