An Anthology of Australian Verse | Page 7

knowing that it was a success, financially and otherwise. Kendall's
audience is not so large as Gordon's, but it is a steadily growing one;
and many readers who have been affected by his musical verse hold the
ill-fated singer in more tender regard than any other. He lived at a time
when Australians had not learned to think it possible that any good
thing in art could come out of Australia,
and were too fully occupied
with things of the market-place to concern themselves much about
literature.
Several attempts have been made to maintain magazines and reviews in
Sydney and Melbourne, but none of them could compete successfully
with the imported English periodicals. `The Colonial Monthly', `The
Melbourne Review', `The Sydney Quarterly', and `The Centennial
Magazine' were the most important of these. They cost more to produce
than their English models, and the fact that their contents were
Australian was not sufficient in itself to obtain for them adequate
support. Newspapers have played a far more important part in our
literary world. `The Australasian', `Sydney Mail' and `Queenslander'
have done a good deal to encourage local writers, but the most
powerful influence has been that of `The Bulletin', started in Sydney in
1880. Its racy, irreverent tone and its humour are characteristically
Australian, and through its columns the first realistic Australian verse
of any importance -- the writings of Henry Lawson and A. B. Paterson

-- became widely known. When published in book form, their verses
met with phenomenal success; Paterson's "The Man from Snowy
River" (1895) having already attained a circulation of over thirty
thousand copies. It is the first of a long series of volumes, issued during
the last ten years, whose character is far more distinctively Australian
than that of their predecessors. Their number and success are evidences
of the lively interest taken by the present generation here in its native
literature.
Australia has now come of age, and is becoming conscious
of its
strength and its possibilities. Its writers to-day are, as a rule, self-reliant
and hopeful. They have faith in their own country; they write of it as
they see it, and of their work and their joys and fears, in simple, direct
language. It may be that none of it is poetry in the grand manner, and
that some of it is lacking in technical finish; but it is a vivid and faithful
portrayal of Australia, and its ruggedness is in character. It is hoped
that this selection from the verse that has been written up to the present
time will be found a not unworthy contribution to the great literature of
the English-speaking peoples.
William Charles Wentworth.
Australasia
Celestial poesy! whose genial sway
Earth's furthest habitable shores
obey;
Whose inspirations shed their sacred light,
Far as the regions
of the Arctic night,
And to the Laplander his Boreal gleam
Endear
not less than Phoebus' brighter beam, --
Descend thou also on my
native land,
And on some mountain-summit take thy stand;
Thence
issuing soon a purer font be seen
Than charmed Castalia or famed
Hippocrene;
And there a richer, nobler fane arise,
Than on
Parnassus met the adoring eyes.
And tho', bright goddess, on the far
blue hills,
That pour their thousand swift pellucid rills
Where
Warragamba's rage has rent in twain
Opposing mountains, thundering
to the plain,
No child of song has yet invoked thy aid
'Neath their
primeval solitary shade, --
Still, gracious Pow'r, some kindling soul

inspire,
To wake to life my country's unknown lyre,
That from
creation's date has slumbering lain,
Or only breathed some savage
uncouth strain;
And grant that yet an Austral Milton's song

Pactolus-like flow deep and rich along, --
An Austral Shakespeare
rise, whose living page
To nature true may charm in ev'ry age; --

And that an Austral Pindar daring soar,
Where not the Theban eagle
reach'd before.
And, O Britannia! shouldst thou cease to ride

Despotic Empress of old Ocean's tide; --
Should thy tamed Lion --
spent his former might, --
No longer roar the terror of the fight; --

Should e'er arrive that dark disastrous hour,
When bow'd by luxury,
thou yield'st to pow'r; --
When thou, no longer freest of the free,
To
some proud victor bend'st the vanquish'd knee; --
May all thy glories
in another sphere
Relume, and shine more brightly still than here;

May this, thy last-born infant, then arise,
To glad thy heart and greet
thy parent eyes;
And Australasia float, with flag unfurl'd,
A new
Britannia in another world.
Charles Harpur.
Love
She loves me! From her own bliss-breathing lips
The live confession
came, like rich perfume
From crimson petals bursting into bloom!

And still my heart at the remembrance skips
Like a young lion, and
my tongue, too, trips
As drunk with joy! while every object seen
In
life's diurnal round wears in its mien
A clear assurance that no doubts
eclipse.
And if the common things of nature now
Are like old faces
flushed with new delight,
Much more the consciousness of that rich
vow
Deepens the beauteous, and refines the bright,
While throned I
seem on love's divinest height
'Mid