Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/49

SKETCH. Mxix about the last of the enthusiastic sailors of his own race who, from the days of Prince Henry of Portugal, had made the dis- covery of new worlds the great ambition of their lives. Of all the early navigators who had sailed the South Pacific, he is the only one of whom it can be said with certainty that he set out on his voyage with the distinct intention of discovering the ideal Terra Australis. Geography is not usually a rich field for poetic invention ; but the unknown continent appealed so powerfully to the imagination that it could not expect to escape poetic treatment. In a long forgotten poem by T. K. Hervey entitled Australia — ^which reached a third edition in 1829 — the author gives a prophetic vision of the ruin of old England, and then proceeds to describe her revival in a southern empire; logically approaching the subject with a sketch of the imaginary continent. The unhappy fate of Magellan and Columbus having been deplored, the poet While Science wept above each hallowed grave, And mourned her gallant wanderers of the wave, Hope smiled to think they had not lived in vain, And Fancy built new r^ons in the main : — Far o'er the billowy waste she proudly trod, To teach the wonders and the ways of Gk)d ; • And where the vast antarctic waters roll, She reared a continent against the Pole ! The result of Cook's explorations is described with equal accuracy : — Before his daring soul and piercing eye, Behold that polar vision darkly fly ! See, from its throne upon the waters, hurled The shapeless phantom of a southern world ! Digitized by Google