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The Kia ora coo-ee : the magazine for the ANZACS in the Middle East, 1918

September in The South

September in The South.

Come, gather your verses together, you bards of the rhythmical pen,
While gold of the blossoming weather breaks over the Southland again;
Take heed, if September you treasure 'bove seasons of fever and flood,
And give us the galloping measure that simmers and quickens the blood.

Our eyes are nigh blinded by gazing through crazy, implacable years,
And that which of old was amazing now jars on the drums of our ears.
O, lest for a song we should perish unseen in the toils of distrust,
Afford us the music we cherish adrift in the smothering dust.

It seems to us ages and ages since martial cadenzas were made
By trumpeting striplings and sages, to herald the stagnance of trade;
But we, who've been tempered in battle, and blighted by withering drouth,
Love ever a song of the wattle that wakes in the blossoming south.

Agression is hard to dissemble, defiance is harder to break
When "Mars" and his worshippers tremble, and thundering ire is awake;
Bat weavers of rhyme and of reason can soften the Warrior's curse,
And give us the rhyme of the season in rhythmical, fanciful verse.

Nor terror nor toil can impugn us when far-flying missiles assail.
For gay inspirations attune us to laugh in the teeth of a gale.
At home, in the timber and clearing, gay birds fleck the bosom of spring,
And presently we shall be hearing the bards of Anzalia sing.