The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon | Page 4

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 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