Love is Best.
27
No mountain tops to pierce the sky, no valleys sweet with rivers,
No shadowy haunt of fem and flower, where silver moon- light quivers;
But something strange, and yet sublime, a wild barbaric splendour,
With lines as harsh and tints as crude as Nature's brush can render.
The level plain—a waveless sea—far as the eye can follow,
Just broken there by soft grey blots of blue-bush in a hollow,
And distant hills, as dim as dreams—a hazy blue illusion,
That seem as if a breath of wind would waste them in diffusion;
And 'mid the sterile stretch of stones, as from a mountain shattered,
That lie just as grotesquely grouped as when they first were scattered,
A sudden blaze of scarlet flowers, that bear Sturt's honoured name,
As if the land had graven it upon her heart in flame;
No shadowy haunt of fem and flower, where silver moon- light quivers;
But something strange, and yet sublime, a wild barbaric splendour,
With lines as harsh and tints as crude as Nature's brush can render.
The level plain—a waveless sea—far as the eye can follow,
Just broken there by soft grey blots of blue-bush in a hollow,
And distant hills, as dim as dreams—a hazy blue illusion,
That seem as if a breath of wind would waste them in diffusion;
And 'mid the sterile stretch of stones, as from a mountain shattered,
That lie just as grotesquely grouped as when they first were scattered,
A sudden blaze of scarlet flowers, that bear Sturt's honoured name,
As if the land had graven it upon her heart in flame;
