Chapter XV: The Australian Poets

When I went into the Public Library at Sydney and asked for the catalogue of the Australian poets I thought the attendant, in complying, had handed me the Federal electoral rolls. He said, however, that it was all right. There are just about as many people anxious to make the poetry of the country as there are to make its laws, and among them all they have made a mess of both. Parkes, addressing a public meeting, once said, "I would rather be a third-rate poet than a first-class politician." Somebody interjected: "Well, aren't you?" I thank God when I think of the few awful hours I spent with the Australian muse (or, more correctly speaking, bemuse) that I have read very little Australian poetry. Nevertheless I have read enough to enable me to arrive at a definition of what really constitutes a right to be called a poet, and it is: Any person of either sex who can write in metre without being laughed at. In applying this golden rule it will be seen that there are no poets in Australia except the alleged humorous versifiers.

Sir Henry Parkes, deceased, is generally referred to in the Australian Press as poet, politician and patriot. I haven't the time to inquire into all the other things, but I did spend an hour with his "Fragmentary Thoughts" and "Stolen Moments." They are well worth perusing, and I think everybody ought to read those sympathetic lines "To a Beautiful and Friendless Child; aged four years." The child was aged four years; it is not "an early poem," which fact I thought it just as well to mention before quoting the opening stanza:

"Did shock of birth-bliss slay thy mother?
How from all kindred torn?
Than God's all-seeing eye, what other
Said that a man was born?"

But the poet is even better in his stirring moods, as in the well-known (in Australia) "Australian Youth's Song." Here is one of the "jewels four lines long":--

"We live in hope--we live in hope!
Forget the day that's gone!
Or dim or bright, the future's light
Is all to guide us on."

A strong man would shed tears over the same poet's "The Dying Convict's Letter." For that reason I shan't quote it any further than to say it begins:

"In mental agony he lifted up
His voice to Him who hears the sufferer's prayer...."

That's just what you feel like doing. The spirit of humility expressed in the poem is in sharp contrast to the ferocity expressed by a brother bard, who, on leaving Australia's shores, shook his clenched fist at the continent and recited some lines ending--

"The rich man's Heaven, the poor man's Hell,
Land of ----, Fare thee well!"

There has been a lot of controversy in the Commonwealth as to the missing word, so I leave it blank, and pass on to the ode that won the New South Wales Government prize of fifty guineas, in open competition, as being the best "Occasional" for the birth of the Commonwealth. Listen to the opening:

"Awake! Arise! The wings of dawn
Are beating at the Gates of Day!"

And that was addressed to the Australian for the purpose of arousing him! What chance had it of doing so; the Australian merely turned over and said, "Why the blanky blank should I get up?" It's just as well that all should know here and now that the only way to waken Australia is to heave a brick at it--same as I'm doing.

One of the best known poets of Australia, I understand, is the Rev. Mr. Cuzens, who published a volume entitled "Footprints of Jesus." I make bold to reprint a verse of "The Temptation":

"A dreary wilderness, a desert wild
Of Nature's varied loveliness despoiled,
Stretched out, I see, in barrenness and woe
A fitting emblem of the world below;
Deep gloom and dread
The land o'erspread."

I cannot say of what denomination the rev. poet was; but I understand it was written before the days of the Salvation Army commenced to enrich the world's library of hymns.

There was also a poet named Kendall, of whom Australia is very proud. The Press critics call him an "impulsive songster," and I do remember taking a little thing of his away in memory after reading a collection of his verse. The little thing went:

"There is a river in the hills
I long to think about,
Perhaps the searching feet of man
Have never found it out."

It suggested to me at the time "Mary had a little lamb"--slightly uneven in the feet. Kendall was accused of purloining from Tennyson, and he explained--"We cannot pass through the woods without taking away the smell of violets." But that wasn't the charge; it was that he dug the violets up by the roots and transplanted them in his own pages. But Kendall has gone; he has also his reward. I saw a life-sized painting of him in the hall of a Sydney sporting hotel when I was staying there. For what more can a poet ask in Australia?

Brunton Stephens, though he wrote in Australia, received his impression and education in the old world. He did not adopt Australia till he was 31 years of age, and a man gathers few new impressions after thirty; he lives in and writes of those of youth. Thus, strictly speaking, Stephens was not an Australian poet. Yet he was the only man in the country who ever wrote with a philosophic outlook (and a knowledge of prosody). He was not an admirer of Australian poetry either: "It lacks a fundamental basis of brain" was his verdict. Poor Stephens, Stephens the stickler for the precise word, the admirer of literary craftsmanship--this is what he got at the hands of an Australian bard, who wrote a critical biography of him on the literary page of the National newspaper; mine are the italics and parenthetical remarks:

"He was the youngest of a family of six--two brothers and three sisters." (Stephens once taught mathematics.)

"Fielding, Smollett, Shakespeare, _and_ the English classics were more to the boy's taste than athletics...." (What nationality were F., S. and S.?)

"At 11 his father died...."(!)

"The position was secured for him through the influence of a fellow student named Simpson, whose father later on became the discoverer of chloroform as an anaesthetic--and a knight." (Intrepid Simpson's father.)

"They (the Leylands) literally rolled in riches."

"Within a week he delivered a lecture on 'The Antiquities of Egypt' in the Brisbane School of Arts." (! again).

"Men of Stephens' temperament too often have made mistakes in marrying--it is sufficient to say that Stephens married the predestined woman." (As a matter of fact Stephens was most happily married.)

I merely mention these things to show how they treat a poet in Australia.

For the rest, the Australian poets are pessimists, alleged funny writers, and parodists of Swinburne and Kipling. Paterson's writings smell of horse sweat and stable sweepings. Lawson sings of Colonial beer--which, dear English reader, God spare you from ever tasting--Daley retails the philosophy of that blasphemous old reprobate, Omar, with this difference--a pewter of Colonial beer, not a jug of wine. And then there are Gordon, and Sladen, John Cash Neild, Mr. Furtell and Farrell. The last mentioned wrote a poem "How he Died." I've never read it, and don't want to, so can't say how he died. But if it was an Australian poet who was dying I know how he ought to have been killed. In the pleasant metaphor of his own country, he should have got it where the chicken got the axe.