The dross you vainly prize;
The gold thy care has won;
Are fading from thy weary eyes
Like mists before the sun.

The poem is not dated, but it's likely that it was written while he was in Australia. People experienced hard living conditions in the Australian Gold Rush. Food was expensive, and often rotted when reaching the miners. There were killings, dieses, suicide, hunger, and just simply old age. Fenerty probably wrote this poem in memory of someone he knew or met; perhaps a gold seeker who made a fair earning in the fields before dying. There are four stanzas in the poem, and basically he is saying that he cannot take with him his gold, and that Heaven will offer him a greater wealth and comfort of living. Fenerty using the line, "In a sad world like this" in light of the gold rush. Though the gold rush build Australia to what it is today, at the time it was a display of human's worst; greed, and a disregard for others (including the earth).