Wide Lies Australia
Wide Lies Australia - meaning Summary
Nationhood as Open Inheritance
Lawson celebrates Australia as a vast, promising nation open to settlers and shaped by British and European heritage. The poem praises unity, freedom, and national growth, casting the land as fertile for a new generation to live nobly and face future dangers with their forebears' courage. It also explicitly frames opportunity for the "White Man" and positions Australia as a bulwark in global balance, reflecting exclusionary imperial attitudes.
Read Complete AnalysesWide lies Australia! The seas that surround her Flow for her unity – all states in one. Never has Custom nor Tyranny bound her – Never was conquest so peacefully won. Fair lies Australia! with all things within her Meet for a Nation, the greatest to be: Free to the White Man to woo and to win her: Those who’d be happy and those who’d be free. Free to live fully and free to live cleanly, Free to give learning to daughter and son; Free to act nobly but not to act meanly, Free to forget what the old lands had done. Free to be Brothers! Our hymn and our sermon To keep for the White World the balance of Power, Welcoming all, be they British or German, All come to help us – we’ll wait for the hour. Out in the West where the flood-water gathers – Out in the drought on the sand desert lone – Went the brave English and brave foreign fathers Fearlessly facing the fearful unknown. Gemmed with their names lies the great past behind us. Dark lie the storm clouds before us today, Let us so live the future shall find us Facing the danger as dauntless as they.
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