An Anthology of Australian Verse

Part 1

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An Anthology of Australian Verse Edited by Bertram Stevens

Dedicated to DAVID SCOTT MITCHELL, Esq. Sydney

Preface

The Editor has endeavoured to make this selection representative of the best short poems written by Australians or inspired by Australian scenery and conditions of life, -- "Australian" in this connection being used to include New Zealand. The arrangement is as nearly as possible chronological; and the appendix contains brief biographical particulars of the authors, together with notes which may be useful to readers outside Australia.

The Editor thanks Messrs. H. H. Champion, Henry Gyles Turner, E. B. Loughran, A. Brazier and Walter Murdoch (Melbourne), Mr. Sydney Jephcott (Upper Murray, Vic.), Mr. Fred. Johns (Adelaide), Mr. Thomas Cottle (Auckland), Mr. J. C. Andersen (Christchurch), Messrs. David Scott Mitchell, Alfred Lee, A. W. Jose, and J. Le Gay Brereton (Sydney), for their generous help. Mr. Douglas Sladen's anthologies, Messrs. Turner and Sutherland's "Development of Australian Literature", and `The Bulletin' have also furnished much useful information.

Contents

Introduction

William Charles Wentworth. Australasia "Australasia: a Poem"

Charles Harpur. Love Words A Coast View "Poems"

William Forster. `The Love in her Eyes lay Sleeping' "Midas"

James Lionel Michael. `Through Pleasant Paths' "John Cumberland" Personality Periodical (Sydney, 1858)

Daniel Henry Deniehy. Love in a Cottage A Song for the Night Periodical (Sydney, 1847)

Richard Rowe. Superstites Rosae Soul Ferry "Peter 'Possum's Portfolio"

Sir Henry Parkes. The Buried Chief "Fragmentary Thoughts"

Thomas Alexander Browne (`Rolf Boldrewood'). Perdita "Old Melbourne Memories"

Adam Lindsay Gordon. A Dedication "Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes" Thora's Song "Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric" The Sick Stock-rider "Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes"

Henry Kendall. Prefatory Sonnets September in Australia Rose Lorraine "Leaves from Australian Forests" To a Mountain Araluen After Many Years Hy-Brasil "Songs from the Mountains" Outre Mer "Poems"

Marcus Clarke. The Song of Tigilau "Austral Edition of the collected Works of Marcus Clarke"

Patrick Moloney. Melbourne "An Easter Omelette" (Melbourne, 1879)

Alfred Domett. An Invitation A Maori Girl's Song "Ranolf and Amohia"

James Brunton Stephens. The Dominion of Australia The Dark Companion "Miscellaneous Poems" Day Night "Convict Once"

Thomas Bracken. Not Understood Spirit of Song "Musings in Maoriland"

Ada Cambridge. What of the Night? Good-bye The Virgin Martyr Honour Despair Faith Manuscript

Alexander Bathgate. The Clematis "Far South Fancies"

Philip Joseph Holdsworth. Quis Separabit? Manuscript My Queen of Dreams "Station Hunting on the Warrego"

Mary Hannay Foott. Where the Pelican Builds New Country No Message Happy Days "Morna Lee and other Poems"

Henry Lea Twisleton. To a Cabbage Rose "Poems"

Part 2

Mrs. James Glenny Wilson. Fairyland A Winter Daybreak The Lark's Song "A Book of Verses"

Edward Booth Loughran. Dead Leaves Isolation Ishmonie "'Neath Austral Skies"

John Liddell Kelly. Immortality Heredity "Heather and Fern"

Robert Richardson. A Ballade of Wattle Blossom A Song "Willow and Wattle"

James Lister Cuthbertson. Australia Federata At Cape Schanck "Barwon Ballads" Wattle and Myrtle Periodical (Melbourne) The Australian Sunrise Periodical (Geelong)

John Farrell. Australia to England Periodical (Sydney, 1897)

Arthur Patchett Martin. Bushland "The Withered Jester, and other Verses"

Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen. Under the Wattle Periodical (1888)

Victor James Daley. Players Periodical (Sydney, 1900) Anna Periodical (Sydney, 1902) The Night Ride Manuscript

Alice Werner. Bannerman of the Dandenong "A Time and Times"

Ethel Castilla. An Australian Girl A Song of Sydney "The Australian Girl, and other Verses"

Francis William Lauderdale Adams. Something Gordon's Grave To A. L. Gordon "Poetical Works" Love and Death Manuscript

Thomas William Heney. Absence "In Middle Harbour, and other Verse" A Riverina Road Periodical (Sydney, 1891)

Patrick Edward Quinn. A Girl's Grave Periodical (Sydney, 1889)

John Sandes. `With Death's Prophetic Ear' "Ballads of Battle"

Inez K. Hyland. To a Wave Bread and Wine "In Sunshine and in Shadow"

George Essex Evans. An Australian Symphony A Nocturne A Pastoral "Loraine, and other Verses" The Women of the West Periodical (Melbourne)

Mary Colborne-Veel. `What Look hath She?' Saturday Night `Resurgam' "The Fairest of the Angels, and other Verse" Distant Authors Periodical (London)

John Bernard O'Hara. Happy Creek A Country Village Flinders "Lyrics of Nature"

M. A. Sinclair. The Chatelaine Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)

Sydney Jephcott. Chaucer White Paper Splitting "The Secrets of the South" Home-woe A Ballad of the last King of Thule A Fragment Manuscript

Andrew Barton Paterson (`Banjo'). The Daylight is Dying Clancy of the Overflow Black Swans The Travelling Post Office "The Man from Snowy River" The Old Australian Ways By the Grey Gulf-Water "Rio Grande's Last Race, and other Verses"

Jessie Mackay. The Grey Company A Folk Song Dunedin in the Gloaming The Burial of Sir John Mackenzie Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)

Henry Lawson. Andy's gone with Cattle Out Back The Star of Australasia Middleton's Rouseabout The Vagabond The Sliprails and the Spur "In the Days when the World was Wide, and other Verses"

Arthur Albert Dawson Bayldon. Sunset The Sea To Poesy "The Western Track, and other Verses"

Jennings Carmichael. An Old Bush Road A Woman's Mood "Poems"

Agnes L. Storrie. Twenty Gallons of Sleep A Confession "Poems"

Martha M. Simpson. To an Old Grammar Periodical (Sydney)

Part 3

William Gay. Primroses "Christ on Olympus, and other Poems" To M. Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum "Sonnets"

Edward Dyson. The Old Whim Horse "Rhymes from the Mines, and other Lines"

Dowell O'Reilly. The Sea-Maiden Periodical (Sydney, 1895)

David MacDonald Ross. Love's Treasure House The Sea to the Shell The Silent Tide The Watch on Deck Autumn "The After Glow"

Mary Gilmore. A Little Ghost Periodical (Orange, N.S.W.) Good-Night Periodical (Brisbane)

Bernard O'Dowd. Love's Substitute Our Duty Manuscript

Edwin James Brady. The Wardens of the Seas Manuscript

Will. H. Ogilvie. Queensland Opal Periodical (London) Wind o' the Autumn Periodical (London) Daffodils Periodical (Edinburgh) A Queen of Yore Periodical (Sydney) Drought Periodical (London) The Shadow on the Blind Periodical (London)

Roderic Quinn. The House of the Commonwealth Periodical (Sydney) The Lotus-Flower Manuscript

David McKee Wright. An Old Colonist's Reverie "Station Ballads, and other Verses"

Christopher John Brennan. Romance "XXI Poems: Towards the Source" Poppies Manuscript

John Le Gay Brereton. The Sea Maid "Oithona" Home "Sea and Sky" Wilfred Periodical (Sydney)

Arthur H. Adams. Bayswater, W. Manuscript Bond Street Periodical (London)

Ethel Turner. A Trembling Star `Oh, if that Rainbow up there!' "Gum Leaves"

Johannes Carl Andersen. Soft, Low and Sweet "Songs Unsung" Maui Victor Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)

Dora Wilcox. In London "Verses from Maoriland"

Ernest Currie. Laudabunt Alii Periodical (Timaru, N.Z.)

George Charles Whitney. Sunset Manuscript

James Lister Cuthbertson. [reprise] Ode to Apollo Periodical (Melbourne)

Notes on the Poems

Biographical Notes

---------------------------------- An Anthology of Australian Verse ----------------------------------

Introduction

As the literature of a country is, in certain respects, a reflex of its character, it may be advisable to introduce this Anthology with some account of the main circumstances which have affected the production of Australian poetry.

Australia was first settled by the British a little more than a century ago, so that we are still a young community. The present population, including that of New Zealand, is a little under five millions, or about the same as that of London; it is chiefly scattered along the coast and the few permanent waterways, and a vast central region is but sparsely inhabited as yet. All climates, from tropical to frigid, are included within the continent, but the want of satisfactory watersheds renders it peculiarly liable to long droughts and sudden floods. The absence of those broad, outward signs of the changing seasons which mark the pageant of the year in the old world is probably a greater disadvantage than we are apt to suspect. Here, too, have existed hardly any of the conditions which obtained in older communities where great literature arose. There is no glamour of old Romance about our early history, no shading off from the actual into a dim region of myth and fable; our beginnings are clearly defined and of an eminently prosaic character. The early settlers were engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with nature, and in the establishment of the primitive industries. Their strenuous pioneering days were followed by the feverish excitement of the gold period and a consequent rapid expansion of all industries. Business and politics have afforded ready roads to success, and have absorbed the energies of the best intellects. There has been no leisured class of cultured people to provide the atmosphere in which literature is best developed as an art; and, until recently, we have been content to look to the mother country for our artistic standards and supplies. The principal literary productions of our first century came from writers who had been born elsewhere, and naturally brought with them the traditions and sentiments of their home country.

We have not yet had time to settle down and form any decided racial characteristics; nor has any great crisis occurred to fuse our common sympathies and create a national sentiment. Australia has produced no great poet, nor has any remarkable innovation in verse forms been successfully attempted. But the old forms have been so coloured by the strange conditions of a new country, and so charged with the thoughts and feelings of a vigorous, restless democracy now just out of its adolescence, that they have an interest and a value beyond that of perhaps technically better minor poetry produced under English skies.

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