SWEET singer of an older land;
    Thro’ countless centuries
A greener and a colder land
    Loved well by melodies;
And with her venturers came I
To seek beneath a sunny sky
A home, and croon my lullaby
    Amid these alien trees.

No interloper, scorning here
    The unfamiliar way;
No exile, ever mourning here
    Joys of an older day;
The feathered folk have welcomed me
Into their joyous company
To join their chorus, fluting free
    My ever liquid lay.

At dawning and at evening
    Up from the gully floats
My song, a gentle leavening
    To wilder woodland notes—
Up from the gully ’mid the gums
Where mountain torrents roll their drums
I join the chorusing that comes
    From twice a hundred throats.

Alien no longer, merrily
    My melodies I’ve brought;
The bushland offers cheerily
    The sanctu’ry I’ve sought.
And, where the swift creek sings and turns
’Mid wattle-trees and nodding ferns,
My brood awakens and relearns
    The songs old England taught.