Ballarat Poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

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 lass,
Whose flowering new bewitches
With beauty all who pass.

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.