D'Entrecasteaux Channel

Now D’Entrecasteaux Channel opens fair,   
  And Tasman’s Head lies on your starboard bow   
Huge rocks and stunted trees meet you where’er   
  You look around; ’t is a bold coast enow.   
With foul wind and crank ship ’t were hard to wear:           
  A reef of rocks lies westward long and low.   
At ebb tide you may see the Actæon lie   
A sheer hulk o’er the breakers, high and dry.   
 
’T is a most beauteous Strait. The Great South Sea’s   
  Proud waves keep holiday along its shore,           
And as the vessel glides before the breeze,   
  Broad bays and isles appear, and steep cliffs hoar   
With groves on either hand of ancient trees   
  Planted by Nature in the days of yore:   
Van Dieman’s on the left and Bruné’s isle           
Forming the starboard shore for many a mile.   
 
But all is still as death! Nor voice of man   
  Is heard, nor forest warbler’s tuneful song.   
It seems as if this beauteous world began   
  To be but yesterday, and the earth still young           
Van Dieman’s Land (tasmania).   
And unpossessed. For though the tall black swan   
  Sits on her nest and stately sails along,   
And the green wild doves their fleet pinions ply,   
And the gray eagle tempts the azure sky,           
 
Yet all is still as death! Wild solitude   
  Reigns undisturbed along that voiceless shore,   
And every tree seems standing as it stood   
  Six thousand years ago. The loud wave’s roar   
Were music in these wilds. The wise and good           
  That wont of old, as hermits, to adore   
The God of Nature in the desert drear,   
Might sure have found a fit sojourning here.