The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon | Page 4

all who had pretensions to literary taste. The reputation of the book spread to England, and Major Whyte Melville did not disdain to place the lines of the dashing Australian author at the head of his own dashing descriptions of sporting scenery. Unhappily, the melancholy which Gordon's friends had with pain observed increased daily, and in the full flood of his success, with congratulations pouring upon him from every side, he was found dead in the heather near his home with a bullet from his own rifle in his brain.
I do not propose to criticise the volumes which these few lines of preface introduce to the reader. The influence of Browning and of Swinburne upon the writer's taste is plain. There is plainly visible also, however, a keen sense for natural beauty and a manly admiration for healthy living. If in "Ashtaroth" and "Bellona" we recognise the swing of a familiar metre, in such poems as "The Sick Stockrider" we perceive the genuine poetic instinct united to a very clear perception of the loveliness of duty and of labour.
"'Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass, To wander as we've wandered many a mile,?And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass, Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while;?'Twas merry 'mid the blackwoods, when we spied the station roofs, To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard,?With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs, Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard!
"Aye! we had a glorious gallop after `Starlight' and his gang, When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat;?How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang To the strokes of `Mountaineer' and `Acrobat';?Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, Close behind them through the tea-tree scrub we dashed;?And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath! And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crash'd!"
This is genuine. There is no "poetic evolution from the depths of internal consciousness" here. The writer has ridden his ride as well as written it.
The student of these unpretending volumes will be repaid for his labour. He will find in them something very like the beginnings of?a national school of Australian poetry. In historic Europe, where every rood of ground is hallowed in legend and in song, the least imaginative can find food for sad and sweet reflection. When strolling at noon down an English country lane, lounging at sunset by some ruined chapel on the margin of an Irish lake, or watching the mists of morning unveil Ben Lomond, we feel all the charm which springs from association with the past. Soothed, saddened, and cheered by turns, we partake of the varied moods which belong not so much to ourselves as to the dead men who, in old days, sung, suffered, or conquered in the scenes which we survey. But this our native or adopted land has no past, no story. No poet speaks to us. Do we need a poet to interpret Nature's teachings, we must look into our own hearts, if perchance we may find a poet there.
What is the dominant note of Australian scenery? That which is the dominant note of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry -- Weird Melancholy. A poem like "L'Allegro" could never be written by an Australian. It is too airy, too sweet, too freshly happy. The Australian mountain forests are funereal, secret, stern. Their solitude is desolation. They seem to stifle, in their black gorges, a story of sullen despair. No tender sentiment is nourished in their shade. In other lands the dying year is mourned, the falling leaves drop lightly on his bier. In the Australian forests no leaves fall. The savage winds shout among the rock clefts. From the melancholy gums strips of white bark hang and rustle. The very animal life of these frowning hills is either grotesque or ghostly. Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out, shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks,?and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter. The natives aver that, when night comes, from out the bottomless depth of some lagoon the Bunyip rises, and, in form like monstrous sea-calf, drags his loathsome length from out the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy.?No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains. Hopeless explorers have named them out of their sufferings -- Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. As when among sylvan scenes in places
"Made green with the running of rivers,?And gracious with temperate air,"
the soul is soothed and satisfied, so, placed before the frightful grandeur of these barren hills,