Original Poetry.

Colonist, Issue 68, 15 June 1858, Page 4

Original Poetry.

He's fsr away I like sac weel; 0! Fortune, send him hame to mo, Wi* h-art unaltered, kind and leal, In safety o'er yon stormy sea. He promised me haitii silks and gems, To busk mo braw frae head to lieel; But what were queenly diadems ? Sao far frae him I like sac weel. ir. Onr parting hour I ne'er forget: I see him still beside me stand ; I hear bis trembling accent" yet; I feel him kindly press my hand. He waduß break my trusting heart, Or feign tlie love ho coulclna feel; And love for love, I'll cherish, now, ' Sao far frae'hi in I like sac wool. in. How happy in yon summer how'r, Among the rustling leaves sac green, We met, and spent our trysting hour, Or wandered in the wood unseen ! Then wad lie plight his manly vow And aye the other kiss wad steal; - Oh ! Time, how sadly altered now Sac fur frae him I liko sue well. D. B. Nelson, 1858. ZZ— THE RISE OF TIIE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES. (From the Daily News.) _ .\y It is 70 years since the first British-emi-grants landed on the shores of Australia; men are still living who recollect how a few bark huts, and here and there a hundred or two of straggling sheep, alone broke the wild solitudes which fringed the ! eastern sea-board of the great new conti-J nent. For long years after that, Australa- ' sia, for the British public, meant Botany Bay, and was inseparably connected with the notion of kangaroos, pick-pockets, and ardent spirits. And now, the once convict settlement is rapidly growing into a great people. Already it possesses four cities, the capitals of as many provinces, of which Melbourne contains a population of 100,000, Sydney of 80,000. England, with all her institutions and all her manners, is transplanted bodily into this Great Britain of the antipodes. Our church and our law, our literature and our language, our popular amusements, our modes of education, and our systems of trade, are all reproduced in an Anglo-Saxon population of some 800,000 souls, in a land which some hundred years ago was only speculatively known to geographers, and which 70 years ago was first trodden " by the restless foot ofthe English adventure." Even this is to understate the real facts of this astonishing development. The rapid growth at whhh we are all amazed has been the work of only a small portion of those 70 years. Thirty years back, as Sir John Pakington reminds us, when Lord Aberdeeii was Colonial Secretary, permission was refused to emigrants to establish a settlement in Port Phillip "on the ground that the colonies of Australia were already suffi- \ ciently extensive." Twenty years back, Sir John Pakington might have added, took place the first settlement, without the aid or sanction of Government, of a few adventurous sheepowners in the then unknown region; and last year that very province collected £4,000,000 of revenue, exported £8,000,000 of commodities, and shipped 100 tons of gold. The meeting held on the 26th January, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the settlement of the Australian colonies, was none of great interest in every respect; but there was perhaps no incident connected with it more worthy of observation, whether as a matter of comment on the past, or a les3on for the future, than the unequivocal condemnation passed by the Colonial Secretary of Great Britain upon the colonial policy of his predecessors. As our readers are well aware, the most complete local self-government is now enjoyed by our Australian colonies. The colonial governor is the only political officer appointed by the Imperial Government. Each of the four provinces into which Australia is divided elects its own legislature, and has supreme control over the appointment of its own ministers—a control which has recently been exercised with such activity, especially I in the two more important provinces of New South Wales and Victoria, that, as Mr. Labouchere told the meeting, "He never opened a despatch from a governor of Australia but he found it stated that he was in the midst of a ministerial crisis." In both the greater provinces, but especially in Victoria, a most important struggle is now going on—a struggle between the more \ recent class of settlers, who wish to invest their earnings in land, and the local landed aristocracy of squatters, who against the tide of circumstance, and the necessary progress of self-development in newlysettled communities, are striving hard to maintain those exclusive privileges which were originally granted to them when the land which has now become a teeming and thriving colony, was a mere pastoral wilderness of illimitable sheep-runs. A contest of this nature is evidently of the most vital importance to the interests of the colonists, nor is it to be supposed that the free energies of an Anglo-Saxon race, trusted with the exercise of local self-go-vernment, will pause ere they have removed what, in their judgment, is the one impediment which stands in the way of their attaining at once the full prosperity now enjoyed by .their fellow-adventurers in the plains of Texas or in the valley of the Mississippi. It is a great advantage to the ~ mother country that a question so momen- . tous as this has to be fought out in Australia itself by the instrumentality of those free institutions which we have so wisely conceded to them. Had such a question arisen under the old system of colonial administration, "the results might have been infinitely embarrassing. Happily we have been ; wise in time. Instead of attempting any longer " to conduct at home, under a system full of delays and complication " (it is thus ; that our present Colonial Secretary characterises our old colonial system), "theaffair. of a colony thousands of" miles off, and of 3 ' people naturally jealous of their rights," we cave adopted a simpler and wiser process.

"In order to govern the colonies well". ( we aga i n quot e the Colonial Secretary). "we have resolved to govern very little, an <} to j eave tne details of the management of Australian affaks altogether to Australians." The results of the experiment prove the prescience of.and'the wisdom of f, , , i> i • i c , mn KnfraLm that school of colonial reformer ot whom the late Sir W. Molesworth was a aistinguished leader—and who long struggled against every imputation of ■ speculative Quixotism and unpatriotic surrender ol English rights—-in the cause of what the}' kerned, and as the event has proved most correctly deemed, to be the real interests alike of the mother country and of the coio- • m®? # . P .. A ' It required many years ot patient discussion and earnest exertion to accomplish this great work of sound policy and enlightened liberality; but now to it is accomplished, we see its wisdom in its regutg | rp^e f oun d a tions of a great empire have'boen solidly andsecurely laid; already the magnificent superstructure which is to k e upon them j s rising visible and n i r A v< O aJo nf n«»- nron rapidly before us. A people or our own lineage—a people that speaks our language anc i ru l eß itself by our laws—a people of Qur b ret h ren an d our children—is. busy .in making a new England beyond the waters. It is well for us that we have had the wisdom to aid, not thwart them, in the work, We have refrained from encumbering them by any officious meddling, we have trusted them to their own strength, and shall receive our reward. Already we are relieved from that worst of burdens—the burden of a selfimposed task, which with our best zeal it was impossible.to accomplish. If the time should ever come—as in all probability it will—when the slender tie of formal and official connection which still binds us; to the Australian colonies shall cease, the wisdom and justice of our recent policy will not be forgotten, and the two countries will still remain bound by the enduring ties of mutual interest and common affection, „" mr r TT vtfw OF WESTA SUNDA minsTER ABBEY (From the Athenceum.) The popular notion of a Cathedral or Minster in England is that of a grand old fossil or mammoth Church. Bequeathed to us by old-fashioned forefathers no doubt good enough for their age, they are ponderous records of piety in stone, outlines of sentiment in endless intricacy of lines and arches. Beautiful to see or to sketch, to fit into a portfolio or lighten up a history, of what human use are they besides, except perhaps to get people buried in ? Yet, who that has been locked in, or. f still oftener locked out of, their quiet walls but associates a melancholy pleasure with the remembrance? Who, for instance, that works in populous London, but has a secret liking for those twin-towers of Westminster? Even if he has not played hockey in the cloisters, or vanquished an impertinent lad in the square, or done moonlight exploits in the precincts, or in later life passed beneath them jaded and cold after a night of stormy debate in the House, what dweller in Cockayne'but loves them? Wehavewatched them looming grey and cold, as the dawn of a May morning shot silvery arrows along the lake in St. James' Park, and corae sparkling over the tree's where a poor houseless girl was plying her weary needle within a stone-throw of the Palace. Leagues away at sea, the shadow of the . Minster towers has risen np into thoughts of England and its Parks, slowly fading into the calm eunset. Cannot these old edifices be made useful as well as poetical ? They were useful once, and out of their serviceableness grow their sanctity and their attraction. A few years ago, if we remember well, Cardinal Wiseman hinted at the use he would find for Westminster Abbey. And why not others ? Why should so much stone religion rear itself apart from the emotions of our daily life ? Even to stand beneath its fretted roof is to be impressed with a sentiment of awe and humbleness. Earnest men have said this—or something like this—to themselves; and the answer is that Westminster Abbey is restored to the worship of the multitude, We will go. A January night. Halfpast five by the frozen chimes as we reach the western gale of the Abbey. The working classes are there, bearing the cold as brave men bear it, after, it is to be hoped, an excellent dinner. The majority of the working classes, too, are well wrapped up, and by standing close together they will no doubt be able to keep themselves warm for an hour and a half, until the Abbey door is opened. What a gulf of gloom about the gate, what a wall of gloom in the air, —how grimly the pair of towers stand sooty against the sky ! Below, it is like waiting at the entrance of a crypt, or expecting to go down a coal-»haft. Why are the doors not open, and why are the working classes not allowed to sit down ? The crowd hazard various suppositions. Two chiefly: one to the effect that an hour's expenditure of light is a consideration to the Chapter,— another promulgated by a sarcastic working man, to the effect that the working classes have a tendency to injure national monuments. —" I've come here regularly for five and twenty years," a working authority informs us, with a reasonable f amount of pride, " and I knows 'em."— Weary and wedged in, and punched by a great variety of elbows, we learn from another gentleman that this "is not much of a erowcl." A quarter to six, and then in the haze above a little feeble star hangs out a light. And by that glow over the southern tower we shall soon have the - moon,—yes, there she is, stealing slowly n and silently bjr. The saints in the west window now come out dimly from their y wrappings of immemorial grime and decay, Fourteen, an arithmetical neighbor informs y us. "Stand off the pavement—to left or m right. Gentlemen, pray stand away!"— s sings the blithe and poetical police inspec- - tor. Gentlemen, pray stand away! The s doors are going to open—in—another a quarter of an hour to wait,—discuss theoe logy, news,—watch the flitting lights and , the women's faces glimmering down on us.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC,

from the broad sanctuaiy, and at last welcome the grind of the rusty gate,—the sudden gush of two jets of gas lighting up the spandrils of the western gate, —and are borne along into a region of light! How bright and vivid the nave looks, awoke out of its dusty sleep and vacant hierarchical gloom ! What an incursion of the nine-teenth-century invaders, flooding all the aisles, irrespective of the memories and the sanctities of the place! How does this rush sound by Elizabeth's grave or in the peacefulness of Poet's.Corner ? To be sure the monuments are uninhabited, but are not famous dead here, freezing behind their grim, purgatorial rails. Nave and aisles, north and south, are liberally provided with foreign-looking rough chairs, to which all, gentle and simple, admit themselves; —-and dependent from the clustered pillars are card-board copies, in bold type, of the Hundreth Psalm, on which a clear light is shed from the bronze trees that put forth branching arms and circlets of gas in the interspaces. The nave is a sea of human faces, twisted and quirked in strange eddies, fluctuating in restless valleys, and occasionally tossed up into reluctant ridges. Choirwards the gloom is solid and charnellike. Icy gusts sweep from hundreds of hidden doors and passages—marble senators and judges and astronomers stand at chill in the light;— Newton cannot hold the globe, and Pitt seems congealed over the door that is battered fromoutside with blows that recall that there are still descendants of sturdy Saxons. The grand din of the organ swells at last, and there is a sudden stillness. Black, stolid, frftsh-faced vergers appear, and by-and-by the Bishop and canons, heralded by pokers. Then the gates of the choir open and let out a stream of surpli-'ed choristers, and the service begins—f?.intly read and scarcely heard. It is not until the Psalms are reached that the sound of many voices is heard, —nor until the Creed that we find brave old gentlemen of the Sir Roger de Coverly period, who repeat audibly and defiantly. The Dean reads the Lessons, and the Bishop preaches an expressive sermon. The DoxologT i* sung, and the vast throng passes out into the cold night— wiser at the head, warmer at the heart, for a Sunday night spent in Westminster Abbey.