The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon | Page 5

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, it drinks in their sentiment of defiant
ferocity, and is steeped in bitterness.
Australia has rightly been named the Land of the Dawning. Wrapped in

the midst of early morning, her history looms vague and gigantic. The
lonely horseman riding between the moonlight and the day sees vast
shadows creeping across the shelterless and silent plains, hears strange
noises in the primeval forest, where flourishes a vegetation long dead in
other lands, and feels, despite his fortune, that the trim utilitarian
civilisation which bred him shrinks into insignificance beside the
contemptuous grandeur of forest and ranges coeval with an age in
which European scientists have cradled his own race.
There is a poem in every form of tree or flower, but the poetry which
lives in the trees and flowers of Australia differs from those
of other
countries. Europe is the home of knightly song, of bright deeds and
clear morning thought. Asia sinks beneath the weighty recollections of
her past magnificence, as the Suttee sinks, jewel burdened, upon the
corpse of dread grandeur, destructive even in its death. America swiftly
hurries on her way, rapid, glittering, insatiable even as one of her own
giant waterfalls. From the jungles of Africa, and the creeper-tangled
groves of the Islands of the South, arise, from the glowing hearts of a
thousand flowers,
heavy and intoxicating odours -- the Upas-poison
which dwells in barbaric sensuality. In Australia alone is to be found
the Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of Nature learning
how to write. Some see no beauty in our trees without shade, our
flowers without perfume, our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who
have not yet learned to walk on all fours. But the dweller in the
wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of
monstrosities.
He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness.
Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness, he learns the
language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the hieroglyphics
of haggard gum-trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot
winds,
or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes
in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild
dreamland termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our
desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his heritage of
desert sand better than all the bountiful richness of Egypt.
Marcus Clarke.

General Contents.
[The poems are listed by alphabetical order.]
In Memoriam. By Henry Kendall.
Preface. By Marcus Clarke.
A Basket of Flowers
A Dedication
A Fragment
"After the
Quarrel"
A Hunting Song
A Legend of Madrid
An Exile's
Farewell
Ars Longa
Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric
A Song of
Autumn
Banker's Dream
Bellona
Borrow'd Plumes
By Flood
and Field
By Wood and Wold
Cito Pede Preterit Aetas
Confiteor

Credat Judaeus Apella
Cui Bono
Delilah
De Te
"Discontent"

Doubtful Dreams
"Early Adieux"
"Exeunt"
Ex Fumo Dare
Lucem
Fauconshawe
Finis Exoptatus
Fragmentary Scenes from
the Road to Avernus
From Lightning and Tempest
From the Wreck

Gone
Hippodromania; or, Whiffs from the Pipe
How we Beat the
Favourite
"In the Garden"
In Utrumque Paratus
Laudamus
Lex
Talionis
No Name
Pastor Cum
Podas Okus
Potters' Clay

Quare Fatigasti
Rippling Water

Sunlight on the Sea
"Ten Paces
Off"
The Fields of Coleraine
The Last Leap
"The Old Leaven"

The Rhyme of Joyous Garde
The Roll of the Kettledrum; or, The Lay
of the Last Charger The Romance of Britomarte
The Sick Stockrider

The Song of the Surf
The Swimmer
The Three Friends

Thick-headed Thoughts
Thora's Song
To a Proud Beauty
To My
Sister
"Two Exhortations"
Unshriven
Visions in the Smoke

Whisperings in Wattle-Boughs
Wolf and Hound
Wormwood and
Nightshade
Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad
Zu der edlen Yagd
Sea Spray and Smoke Drift
Podas Okus
Am I waking? Was I sleeping?
Dearest, are you watching yet?

Traces on your cheeks of weeping
Glitter, 'tis in vain you fret;

Drifting ever! drifting onward!
In the glass the bright sand runs


Steadily and slowly downward;
Hushed are all the Myrmidons.
Has Automedon been banish'd
From his post beside my bed?

Where has Agamemnon vanished?
Where is warlike Diomed?

Where is Nestor? where Ulysses?
Menelaus, where is he?
Call them
not, more dear your kisses
Than their prosings are to me.
Daylight fades and night must follow,
Low, where sea and sky
combine,
Droops the orb of great Apollo,
Hostile god to me and
mine.
Through the tent's wide entrance streaming,
In a flood of
glory rare,
Glides the golden sunset, gleaming
On your golden,
gleaming hair.
Chide him not, the leech who tarries,
Surest aid were all too late;

Surer far the shaft of Paris,
Winged by Phoebus and by fate;
When
he crouch'd behind the gable,
Had I once his features scann'd,

Phoebus' self had scarce been able
To have nerved his trembling
hand.
Blue-eyed maiden! dear Athena!
Goddess chaste, and wise and brave,

From the snares of Polyxena
Thou would'st fain thy favourite save.

Tell me, is it not far better
That it should be as it is?
Jove's behest
we cannot fetter,
Fate's decrees are always his.