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Helen wrote (quoting A.D. Hope's Australia: They call her a young country, but they lie: She is the last of lands, the emptiest, A woman beyond her change of life, a breast Still tender but within the womb is dry. Jim writes: I always associated this with Lilith. Australia as representation of the first Eve. I haven't done much with it but I'm thinking of examining the representation of Lilith in both Hope and Wright's poetry. It may be eisegesis but Lilith is there in every poem about Eve, Australia represented as woman... I dunno, maybe I'm seeing things. I was in Katoomba in September and at one of the lookouts took refuge from the rain at a coffee shop. Incidentally I was thumbing through the latest collection of essays about Hope "The Double Looking Glass" and found that two elderly women were seated at the table next to mine reading each other poems from the collected Hope. They had finished their capucinos and started on Teaser Rams laughing and ocassionally sighing "oooooohhh" at the juicy bits and then moved on to Advice to Young Women. I couldn't help but watch at their reactions and listen to the way they compared him to Coleridge. And the way one of the ladies, much to the delight of the other would leaf through to the more "sensualist" of the works. I wanted to lean across and tell them how Hope was published in Playboy but refrained. Cheers, Jim This message was sent through MyMail http://www.mymail.com.au