To Frederick

We thank you for the welcome which you gave us in good rhyme,

And we like your mountains blue, and your warm and sunny clime;

Right thankfully we press the soil we travelled, for - but yet

Our dear, our native England we never can forget

Yours is a land of plenty, and almost cloudless skies,

But dearer far the land we left, - home of the great and wise.

‘T is the country of the Mind - we mean you no offence -

But we venerate its classic halls, its blight intelligence.

Its castles, towers, its palaces, its legendary lore –

All that is rich in record crowns our own, our native shore.

Though a cloud rests on her commerce, and threatening storms appear,

And hopes once blight now languish, or ye had not seen us here.

The friends who lov'd each other, and who flourish’d side by side,

"For twenty summers ripening," the mighty waves divide;

'T is more than earthly fondness we cherish for them now, -

And may sorrow never chill their mirth, or settle on their brow.

If this is weakness, be it so: the thoughts that know no bound

Will wander still to some known spot, as if to hallow'd ground.

The joys we oft have gathered from Friendship's holy spring, -

Still linger in our memories, and round our bosoms cling.

Brisbane, April 12, 1848 (sic)