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Eureka


T.C. Carey

1904



Here men with manly vigour wrought
Just fifty years ago.
Here Freedom-loving toilers fought,
Here thirty were laid low.

Here men who loved not Order less,
But hated Thraldom more,
Vowed the foul tyranny should cease
That galled their manhood sore.

They fought, they fell, for Liberty,
With faces to the foe.
They fought, they fell, for you, for me,
Those diggers long ago.

And from the womb of dire defeat,
Sprang laws for Freedom's gain,
For the doom which patriot martyrs meet
Is never met in vain.

And we inherit from that fight
Those things for which they bled;
And all too lightly hold the right,
Denied Eureka's dead.




This poem was written by T.C. Carey and read by him at the Eureka Stockade Jubilee commemora­tion service in 1904.
Published in My Kind of Country, edited by Bill Wannan.

Echoes of Eureka:
Poems of the Australian Republic, The Eureka Rebellion of 1854, and Eureka's Flag of Stars

Australian Nationalism Information Database - www.ausnatinfo.angelfire.com/~natinfo