The Melting Pot

“To the strains of a wild Gipsy dance, played by a young Hungarian girl on a battered guitar, families of Turks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Czechoslovakians, Hungarians, Germans, Austrians, Italians, etc., carried their bundles ashore. A small boy from the steppes of the Ukraine sobbed quietly in the confusion.”—From the description of a scene on one of Melbourne’s wharves.

They came to the sound of a Romany song,
Wandering over the edge of the earth,
An alien people, a polyglot throng,
Done with the lands that had given them birth:

Greek, Rumanian, Turk, Albanian,
Seeking a haven so long vain.
And one, whose landfall gave no joy,
One weeping and bewildered boy
From the steppes of the Ukraine.

Some questing fortune, some romance,
Still shall they come as the years run on.
And we dream awhile, as we gaze askance,
Of the day when the pride of the blood has gone:
Czech, Bulgarian, Pole, Bavarian,
Men out of Italy, women of Spain.
But my mind is with one weeping lad
Whose heart still turns with a longing sad
To his home in the Ukraine.

But the tide is set, and the tide shall run
With never a pause in its waxing flow.
And a dream and a boast shall drift, undone,
As the races merge for their weal or woe:
Swede and Prussian, Swiss and Russian,
Fathers these of a race to be,
And a tearful waif who weeps in vain
Today for the steppes of the broad Ukraine
That fade beyond the sea.

And if one shall rise on a distant day
To mould the race and make it whole,
And, whether in peace or in bloodiest fray,
To give a great new land its soul;
Will it be Briton, or Celt, or Jew,
Or genius sprung from a mingled strain?
Or seed of the seed of an urchin who
Wept ’mid surroundings strange and new,
For his home in the Ukraine?