Hesperia was thy name, O Italy,
From the old Greeks -- deemed Europe's subtlest wits;
For over thee the glorious sunshine quits
Their world. And we accept the augury.
Our land shall be Auroria. Is not she
The Land of Dawn? In her the sun first lits
The realm whereon all darkness never sits;
And here dawned Greater Britain oversea.
Pray we that here has dawned the coming age,
The great Millennium, hoped for eight hundred years,
From war and want--the only heritage
That man brought out of Eden, except tears;
So the new dawning which with us had birth
Shall broaden into light for all the earth.
First published in The Queenslander, 26 November 1887
Note: Auroria was, at that time, being proposed as a new name for the Australian state of New
South Wales.
