The Gay Life The world is so full of beauty, Stories of joy wherever we go, In the rise of the hills and the valleys Of light and of laughter— our debts— To the thy and the she, The crest and the vale For the freedom we’ll gain by the silence That never shall fail.
O, the spirit’s close freedom! And I drift out of sight In the hands of the water
Where the days will not blight
The old dreams—and still Among shadows they dwell. A simple sweet curse, And all tales of the earth.
- Dorothea Mackellar