The King of our Republic

He is coming! He is coming! without heralds, without cheers.
He is coming! He is coming! and he’s been with us for years:
And, if you should pause to wonder who’s the man of whom I sing—
’Tis the King of our Republic, and the man we shall call King.
No, he comes not to amuse us, and he comes not to explain,
With the bathos of the old things over all the land again.
The debatable and tangled, and the vain imagining
Shall be swept out of our pathway by the man that we’ll call King.

He is coming! He is coming! He has heard our spirit call;
He’ll be greatest man since Cromwell in the English nations all,
And he’ll take his place amongst us while the rest are wondering—
Shall the King of our Republic, and the man we will call King.

If you find him stern, unyielding, where his living task is set,
I have told you that a tyrant shall uplift the nation yet;
He will place his country’s welfare over all and everything,
Shall the King of our Republic, and the man that we’ll call King.

Yet his heart shall still be gentle with his brothers gone astray,
For the Great Man of Australia shall be simple in his day—
Modest, kindly, but unyielding, while the watching world shall ring
With the name of our Republic and the man that we call King.

poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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