Banjo Paterson

The Plains

The Plains - meaning Summary

Outback's Harsh, Changing Landscape

The poem presents the Australian plains as a vast, indifferent landscape where abundance and ruin coexist. Paterson contrasts waving grasses with burned, barren stretches and deceptive mirages to show a place of unpredictable fortune. Nature alternately "pampers" and "slays," suggesting a romantic yet ruthless environment. Sensory details—wind, incense-like scents, and dust storms—underscore how survival depends on chance amid the plains' beauty and danger.

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A land, as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go Like shifting symbols of hope deferred; land where you never know. Land of the plenty or land of want, where the grey Companions dance, Feast or famine, or hope or fear, and in all things land of chance, Where Nature pampers or Nature slays, in her ruthless, red, romance. And we catch a sound of a fairy's song, as the wind goes whipping by, Or a scent like incense drifts along from the herbage ripe and dry - Or the dust storms dance on their ballroom floor, where the bones of the cattle lie.

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