The digger's cultured daughter:
Her youth was wildly free.
Now by the placid water
Of tree-girt Wendouree
She walks, a gracious lady,
Where sculptured beauty gleams
By verdant paths and shady,
And dreams her golden dreams.
Her father was a digger,
Bearded and blunt and crude,
His hand quick to the trigger
Should tyranny intrude.
With lifts of sudden riches
He heaped his hoyden la**,
Whose flowering new bewitches
With beauty all who pa**.
For she has sown her gardens
To hide the scars of greed,
And, where the old dump hardens,
Springs many a fruitful seed.
And, as she gathers graces
In loveliness to last,
Serenity replaces
A turbulence long past.
Her father was a miner,
Great in his day and age;
But here to ideals finer
She shapes her heritage.
Until it spreads in glamor,
A wonder to behold
Of peace come after clamor,
Of grace that followed gold.