Blue Mountain Pioneers
The dauntless three! For twenty days and nightsThese heroes battled with the haughty heights;For twenty spaces of the star and sunThese Romans kept their harness buckled on;By gaping gorges, and by cliffs austere,These fathers struggled in the great old year.Their feet they set on strange hills scarred by fire,Their strong arms forced a path through brake and briar;They fought with Nature till they reached the throneWhere morning glittered on the great UNKNOWN!There, in a time with praise and prayer supreme,Paused Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth, in a dream;There, where the silver arrows of the daySmote slope and spire, they halted on their way.Behind them were the conquered hills—they facedThe vast green West, with glad, strange beauty graced;And every tone of every cave and treeWas as a voice of splendid prophecy.