Explore "Bendemeer" by Rolf Boldrewood on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
That bower and its music I never forget, / But oft when alone, in the bloom of the year, / I think-Is the nightingale singing there yet? / Do the roses still bloom by the calm Bendemeer?
The esthetic pioneer who bestowed this romantic name upon the New England village between Tamworth and Uralla probably realised a hazy similarity. Yet roses must have been few and far between, eminently suitable as are soil and climate; and the nightingale awaits the millennium of acclimatisers. The sparrow-wastrel of Europe that he is-doth first appear. The clear stream of the Macdonald, winding through the green hill-encircled valley, renders the comparison faintly apposite. On the whole, the name of Bendemeer will sound as well to our federal successors as Curra-wohbo-lah or Murra-munga-myne; and if it sets young Australia to reading _Lalla Rookh_, it may act as a counterpoise to overmuch devotion to wool and horse-racing-may even tend to the cult which _emollit mores_.