LANDING IN THE DAWN.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 May 1918, Page 7

LANDING IN THE DAWN.

(From a poem by "J. 5.," published in the Sydney Daily Telegraph on the first anniversary of the landing.") Night—and those shadowy ships with heroes freighted! Before them the destroyers race, bows under, Guiding and guarding till the moment fated. Dawn—and a dead that makes the wide world wonder! Thus Australasia, by Old England warded Through the long night of her eventless story, Dreaming, by outer peoples unregarded, Came to her day of sacrifice and gloryFor when the dawn, with blood-red banners streaming, Touched the strait beach, on which the foes took station, Lo, Australasia, roused from her deep dreaming, Turned in her sleep, and sobbed, and woke—a Nation. And now, amid her soreby-thinned battalions With tear-wet eyes for her lost sons she seeketh, And, guerdoning her heroes for their valiance, Thus to the dead, and to the living, speaketh:— •'Sons o' mine, at Anzac sleeping t In your camp beside the cove, Wake, and list, brief vigil keeping, While I greet you with my love. Where those storied water glisten, And the blood-bought cliffs are sheer. God will surely let you listen On this one day of the year. "At the reaping and the shearing, At the sawmill and the mine, In the stockyard and the clearing, At the pressing of the vine, By the camp-fire of the drover, By the fence with sliprail drawn, Men will tell the story over Of that landing in the da.wn. "In the pride of those who vaunt you, In their praise from rfaiy lo day, In the songs of these who chant you, in the tears of those' who pray, In the thougMs- sf thVN? who fov'6 you,f * yotfr' cor*M*y'§ to n'eß.r'£&h%,Thougfc sirriiige- SMai you, foit pMiii jfve fW' W*«iW*<!." Of "PefMHon WnM'fr it- mW folly. be sawi, "Just \*M£ ife mUr llf itim tSe' *s'4m ««!• 0* *W '&§*• ; **W oft 9*»« *-