An Anthology of Australian Verse | Page 5

lines first
appeared in a volume called "Original Poems and Translations" chiefly
by Susannah Watts, published in London in 1802,
a few months
before the appearance of the "History of New South Wales" (1803) --
known as George Barrington's -- which also, in all probability, was not
written by Barrington. In Susannah Watts' book
the Prologue is stated

to be written by "A Gentleman",
but there is no clue to the name of
the author. Mr. Barron Field, Judge of the Supreme Court of New
South Wales, printed in Sydney in 1819 his "First Fruits of Australian
Poetry", for private circulation. Field was a friend of Charles Lamb,
who addressed to him the letter printed in "The Essays of Elia" under
the title of "Distant Correspondents". Lamb reviewed the "First Fruits"
in `The Examiner', and one wishes for his sake that the verses were
more worthy.
The first poem of any importance by an Australian is
William Charles
Wentworth's "Australasia", written in 1823
at Cambridge University
in competition for the Chancellor's medal. There were twenty-seven
competitors, and the prize was awarded to W. Mackworth Praed,
Wentworth being second on the list. Wentworth's poem was printed in
London in the same year, and shortly afterwards in `The Sydney
Gazette', the first Australian newspaper.
In 1826 there was printed at
the Albion Press, Sydney,
"Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native
Minstrel" by Charles Tompson, Junior, the first verse of an
Australian-born writer published in this country. There was also
published in Sydney in 1826 a book of verses by Dr. John Dunmore
Lang, called "Aurora Australis".
Both Lang and Wentworth
afterwards conducted newspapers
and wrote histories of New South
Wales, but their names are more famous in the political than in the
literary annals of the country. At Hobart Town in 1827 appeared "The
Van Diemen's Land Warriors, or the Heroes of Cornwall" by "Pindar
Juvenal", the first book of verse published in Tasmania. During the
next ten years various poetical effusions were printed in the colonies,
which are of bibliographical interest but of hardly any intrinsic value.
Newspapers had been established at an early date, but until the end of
this period they were little better than news-sheets or official gazettes,
giving no opportunities for literature. The proportion of well-educated
persons was small, the majority of the free settlers being members of
the working classes, as very few representatives of British culture came
willingly to this country until after the discovery of gold.
It was not until 1845 that the first genuine, though crude, Australian

poetry appeared, in the form of a small volume of sonnets by Charles
Harpur, who was born at Windsor, N.S.W., in 1817. He passed his best
years in the lonely bush, and wrote largely under the influence of
Wordsworth and Shelley. He had some imagination and poetic faculty
of the contemplative order,
but the disadvantages of his life were
many. Harpur's best work is in his longer poems, from which extracts
cannot conveniently be given here. The year 1842 had seen the
publication of Henry Parkes' "Stolen Moments", the first of a number
of volumes of verse which that statesman bravely issued, the last being
published just before his eightieth year. The career of Parkes is
coincident with a long and important period of our history, in which he
is the most striking figure. Not the least interesting aspect of his
character, which contained much of rugged greatness, was his love of
poetry and his unfailing kindness to the struggling writers of the colony.
Others who deserve remembrance for their services at this time are
Nicol D. Stenhouse and Dr. Woolley. Among the writers of the period
D. H. Deniehy, Henry Halloran, J. Sheridan Moore and Richard Rowe
contributed fairly good verse to the newspapers, the principal of which
were `The Atlas' (1845-9), `The Empire' (1850-8), and two papers still
in existence -- `The Freeman's Journal' (1850) and `The Sydney
Morning Herald', which began as `The Sydney Herald' in 1831. None
of their writings, however, reflected to any appreciable extent the
scenery or life of the new country.
With the discovery of gold a new era began for Australia.
That event
induced the flow of a large stream of immigration, and gave an
enormous impetus to the development of the colonies. Among the
ardent spirits attracted here were J. Lionel Michael, Robert Sealy, R. H.
Horne, the Howitts, Henry Kingsley and Adam Lindsay Gordon.
Michael was a friend of Millais, and an early champion of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Soon after his arrival in Sydney he
abandoned the idea of digging for gold, and began to practise again as a
solicitor. Later on he removed to Grafton on the Clarence River; there
in 1857 Henry Kendall, a boy of 16, found work in his office, and
Michael, discerning his promise, encouraged him to write. Most of the
boy's