The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon | Page 3

than 75 characters have been broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces. Also,?some obvious errors, after being confirmed against other sources, have been corrected.]
[Note: This etext was transcribed from an 1893 edition?published in Melbourne.]
POEMS?by?ADAM LINDSAY GORDON
Sea Spray and Smoke Drift?Bush Ballads & Galloping Rhymes?Miscellaneous Poems?Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric
In Memoriam.?(A. L. Gordon.)
At rest! Hard by the margin of that sea?Whose sounds are mingled with his noble verse,?Now lies the shell that never more will house?The fine, strong spirit of my gifted friend.?Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,?A shining soul with syllables of fire,?Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim?To be their own; the one who did not seem?To know what royal place awaited him?Within the Temple of the Beautiful,?Has passed away; and we who knew him, sit?Aghast in darkness, dumb with that great grief,?Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend;?While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,?The night-wind sings its immemorial hymn,?And sobs above a newly-covered grave.
The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived?That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps?The splendid fire of English chivalry?From dying out; the one who never wronged?A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged?The many, anxious to be loved of him,?By what he saw, and not by what he heard,?As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul?That never told a lie, or turned aside?To fly from danger; he, I say, was one?Of that bright company this sin-stained world?Can ill afford to lose.
They did not know,?The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse,?And revelled over ringing major notes,?The mournful meaning of the undersong?Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes?The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone?Of forest winds in March; nor did they think?That on that healthy-hearted man there lay?The wild specific curse which seems to cling?For ever to the Poet's twofold life!
To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid?Two years ago on Lionel Michael's grave?A tender leaf of my regard; yea I,?Who culled a garland from the flowers of song?To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,?The sad disciple of a shining band?Now gone! to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name?I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true?That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul?Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop?From his high seat to take the offering,?And read it with a sigh for human friends,?In human bonds, and gray with human griefs.
And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,?I stand to-day as lone as he who saw?At nightfall through the glimmering moony mists,?The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,?And strained in vain to hear the going voice.
Henry Kendall.
Preface.
The poems of Gordon have an interest beyond the mere personal one which his friends attach to his name. Written, as they were, at odd times and leisure moments of a stirring and adventurous life, it is not to be wondered at if they are unequal or unfinished. The astonishment of those who knew the man, and can gauge the capacity of this city to foster poetic instinct, is that such work was ever produced here at all. Intensely nervous, and feeling much of that shame at the exercise of the higher intelligence which besets those who are known to be renowned in field sports, Gordon produced his poems shyly, scribbled them on scraps of paper, and sent them anonymously to magazines. It was not until he discovered one morning that everybody knew a couplet or two of "How we Beat the Favourite" that he consented to forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a versemaker. The success of his republished "collected" poems gave him courage, and the unreserved praise which greeted "Bush Ballads" should have urged him to forget or to conquer those evil promptings which, unhappily, brought about his untimely death.
Adam Lindsay Gordon was the son of an officer in the English army, and was educated at Woolwich, in order that he might follow the profession of his family. At the time when he was a cadet there was no sign of either of the two great wars which were about to call forth the strength of English arms, and, like many other men of his day, he quitted his prospects of service and emigrated. He went to South Australia and started as a sheep farmer. His efforts were attended with failure. He lost his capital, and, owning nothing but a love for horsemanship and a head full of Browning and Shelley, plunged into the varied life which gold-mining, "overlanding", and cattle-driving affords. From this experience he emerged to light in Melbourne as the best amateur steeplechase rider in the colonies. The victory he won for Major Baker in 1868, when he rode Babbler for the Cup Steeplechase, made him popular, and the almost simultaneous publication?of his last volume of poems gave him welcome entrance to the houses of