A Colonial Poem by Robert James Campbell Stead

Only a Colonial!
Only a man of nerve and heart
Who has spurned the ease of the life at home,'
Only a man who would play his part
In a new breed-birth on a distant loam;
Only a man of sense and worth
Who is not afraid of the ends of earth.

Only a Colonial!
Only a man who has cornered Fate
And matched his strength with the Unattained;
Only the guard at the Outer Gate,
Who holds for you what he has gained,
That your children, seized of a better sense,
May share with him Toil's recompense.

Only a Colonial!
Only a man who has bridged the deep,
And stained the map a British hue,
Who builds an Empire while ye sleep
And deeds the ownership to you.
'Tis the Viking blood which gave you birth
That has driven him to the ends of earth.

Only a Colonial!
Wherever the flag that ye think is great
Is flown to the farthest winds that blow,
Wherever the colonists ye berate
In their blind faith-vision onward go,
Ye may find ye hearts that are British still —
In your self-conceit do ye count them nil ?

Only a Colonial!
Rough as the bark of his forest tree
His ways may seem to the fat and sleek,
But ye owe your Empire to such as he,
Though the hoar-frost glisten on his cheek;
He has carried your flag where ye dared not go,
And little ye reck of the debt ye owe.

Only a Colonial!
No doubt he is raw on your social laws
And grates on your sense of caste and creed,
But he lives too near to Facts and Cause
To study heraldry and breed;
And, knowing man in his primal state,
He scorns the claims of the social great.

Only a Colonial!
The name in cheap contempt ye fling,
Is not the whim of birth or chance,
We well ignore the flippant sting,
Or charge it to your ignorance;
The colonist, and sons of his,
Have made the Empire what it is.