Results tagged “Henry Kendall”

She plays her harp by hidden rills,
   The sweet shy Muse who dwells
In secret hollows of the hills,
   And green untrodden dells.

Her voice is as the voice of streams
   That under myrtles glide;
Our Kendall saw her face in dreams,
   And loved her till he died.

At times, by some green-eyelashed pool,
   She lies in slumber deep;
Her slender hands are white and cool
   As are the hands of sleep.

And, when the sun of Summer flaunts
   His fire the hills along,
She keeps her secret sunless haunts,
   And sings a shadowy song.

She weaves a wild, sweet magic rune,
   When o'er the tree-tops high
The silver sickle of the moon
   Shines in a rose-grey sky.

But in the dawn, the soft red dawn,
   When fade the stars above,
She walks upon a shining lawn,
   And sings the song of Love.

But, lo, the Muse with flashing eyes,
   And backward-streaming hair!
She grips her steed with strong brown thighs,
   Her panting breasts are bare.

In trances sweet, or tender dreams,
   She has not any part ---
Her blood runs like the blood that streams
   Out of the mountain's heart.

Her lips are red; the pride of life
   Her heart of passion thrills;
She is the Muse whose joy is strife,
   Whose home is on the hills.

Her voice is as a clarion clear,
   And rings o'er the hill and dell;
She sings a song of gallant cheer ---
   Dead Gordon knew her well.

She checks her steed upon a rise ---
   The wind uplifts his mane ---
And gazes far with flashing eyes
   Across the rolling plain.

Who comes in solemn majesty
   Through haze of throbbing heat?
It is the Desert Muse, and she
   Is veiled from head to feet.

Yet men the Mountain Muse will leave,
   And leave the Muse of Streams,
To follow her from dawn to eve ---
   And perish with their dreams.

She passes far beyond their ken,
   With slow and solemn pace,
Over the bleaching bones of men
   Who died to see her face.

Her secrets were to some revealed
   Who loved her passing well ---
But death with burning fingers sealed
   Their lips ere they could tell.

In silence dread she walks apart ---
   Yet I have heard men say
The song that slumbers in her heart
   Will wake the world some day.

She is the Muse of Tragedy,
   And walks on burning sands;
The greatest of the Muses Three
   In our Australian lands.

First published in The Lone Hand, 1 August 1907

It has been suggested that a shop should be established in London for the sale of books by Australian authors. The idea is opportune, and worthy of every support. The time has come for Australia to demonstrate to readers abroad that she has evolved a distinctive national literature. From the earliest days of settlement in this land there were some who sought to give written expression to their thoughts and experiences. At first these were necessarily of British birth, and for the most part they lacked the prescient imagination which might have foreseen the great Australia destined to be. The first of the native-born to achieve note was William Charles Wentworth. He won his garland in England by carrying off second prize for the Chancellor's poetical composition at Cambridge. His subject was "Australasia," and the future great constitution-framer, glimpsed with prophetic vision "A new Britannia in another world." The first absolutely Australian poet was Charles Harpur, born in Windsor, 1817. He possessed the divine instinct, but his work was unequal, and often trivial. He was the forerunner and exemplar of Henry Kendall, who "sat at his feet for long years," and in touching stanzas voiced his gratitude:

   Where Harpur lies the rainy streams,
      And wet hill-heads, with hollows weeping,
   Are swift with wind, and white with gleams,  
      And hoarse with sounds of storms unsleeping. . . .

   But now he sleeps, the tired bard,
      The deepest sleep; and lo, I proffer
   These tender leaves of my regard,

      With hands that falter as they offer.  

Kendall himself had a true lyrical gift, and was particularly adept in symbolising the varying aspects of nature in storm or shine. He had a strenuous and chequered life, suffering "the lot austere which waits upon the man of letters here," and this cast a gloom of depression and sadness over much of his output. Yet he bequeathed many sweet and graceful ballads, while his poem on the opening of the International Exhibition of 1870, with which he won the prize offered by the proprietors of this journal, and which first appeared in these columns, rises to epic grandeur. Largely contemporary with Kendall was Adam Lindsay Gordon. He remains the best known of that generation. For one who reads and treasures the alliterative lyrics of Kendall, several recite with enthusiasm Gordon's galloping "How We Beat the Favourite." To many Australians Gordon is the laureate. But he was of English birth and upbringing, and much of his work, capable and attractive though it be, is rather that of an Englishman domiciled, or exiled, in Australia, than of one who is Australian in every fibre. Marcus Clarke, too, made his mark with one im- mortal work, "For the Term of His Natural Life." Allowing for the exigencies of fiction, in which shadows are deepened, and incidents which in actuality were spread over several fields are concentrated into one, the book is of permanent value as giving a vivid and gripping picture of a condition of things happily long passed away. "Old Boomerang," also (the late J. R. Houlding) in the "Australian Adventures of Christopher Cockle," gave an amusing, yet withal graphic, description of the social life of the roaring "fifties," which should be saved from its threatened oblivion.

In more recent years a new and talented school has arisen which has frankly shaken off the British tradition, and looks at Australian subjects from purely Australian view-points. It shadows forth the "sun-lit plains extended," the rugged dividing ranges, the rushing rivers, the glorious exhilarating air of this vast land. Its favour- ite characters are not the lofty ones, but the strong brave pioneers who hewed their way through dense scrub, cleared the ground for smiling crops, drained swamps, sank shafts, won gold, fought fire and drought and flood, or drove great herds of cattle over a thousand miles and more of almost unexplored territory. A high place must be given to Henry Lawson, whose work is especially representative of this new generation. A. B. Paterson ("Banjo") is a worthy coadjutor, and has a lightness of touch which is complementary to the deeper tone discernible even in the humorous essays of Lawson. T. A. Browne ("Rolf Boldrewood") is likewise worthy of recognition. His novels, founded mainly on incidents of which he had personal knowledge, chronicle phases of Australian development which will never be exactly reproduced. "Robbery Under Arms" is already a classic. Arthur B. Davis ("Steele Rudd") has made thousands smile by his deft description of "Old Dad" and his numerous progeny and retinue, as they struggled to make a living on their successive selections, with interpolated experiences in city life. Both in prose and verse are many worthy of applause whose enumeration space forbids. Without prejudice to those of equal claims may be mentioned Victor Daly, E. J. Brady, the singer of the joys and sorrows of the hardy mariners of our seas, Brunton Stephens, whose "Convict Once" made him famous; George Essex Evans, of "The Secret Key," and the admirable publications in both prose and verse of Ethel Turner, Dorothea Mackellar, Ada Cambridge, Jennings Carmichael, Will Ogilvie, and John le Gay Brereton, not forgetting John Farrell, whose "How He Died" will find a place in every Australian anthology. Special commendation is due to C. J. Dennis, a master of every form of metrical technique, who has created those two impressive and unconventional characters, "The Sentimental Bloke" and "Ginger Mick." We Australians know these writers, who have laid the foundations of our literature; but to the people of Great Britain they are largely unknown. It is our duty to introduce them to readers abroad. That the British public is not insular in its preferences is shown by the remarkable vogue of American fiction, and there is every probability that a demand for Australian literature may also be created. The shop must be established. Whether it is to be at the cost of Government, or of private enterprise, whether alone or as a department of some well established business, has to be decided. But two things are indispensable: it must be staffed with intelligent Australian salesmen, and must carry full lines and advertising material. It will then develop into a meeting place for British and Australians alike, and many who know nothing of Australia will feel the lure of this great land, and through reading our books be inspired to come and dwell amongst us, and become Australians also.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 April 1920 (editorial)

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

If an intelligent and industrious Englishman, with no previous knowledge of Australia, set himself to a careful study of its literature, with the object of learning something of the habits and customs, the thought, and the ideals of this newest of the nations, he would land himself in very strange places. If he took the resolution of visiting Australia, and of living among the people for some years, he would discover that his industry and his intelligence had combined to mislead him utterly, and that his studies had taken him altogether away from even an approximately correct apprehension of Australian life, in its smaller as well as in its greater aspects. The total output of Australian literature -- leaving out journalism -- is considerable in quantity. It may be divided into two sections. The first comprises poems and fiction on the English model; the second is made up of books whose inspiration and colouring are Australian. The first section belonged particularly to a period when the standard of general education in Australia was not high, and when the educated portion of the community still thought of themselves as in exile, and spoke of England as "Home." How persistent was that tradition will be apparent when we remember that even a few years ago Australians of the second and third generations invariably spoke of a visit to England as "a trip Home." There were no Australian publishers willing to take big risks of the narrow local market, and they had no means of access to the English book circles. Teaching, too, in the Universities and in schools, was for a long time invariably on the English model, with no attempt to meet and cope with local needs, and separate ideals. Such novelists as Henry Kingsley and Miss Ada Cambridge, to name two who had some vogue, used Australia merely as a setting; their characters in thought and in action were entirely English. That cult persists even today, although not so marked, and the writers who follow it have their market in England rather than in Australia. Even Kendall, whose reputation will be revived some day when the babel noises of present day jingle are subdued, used the Australian bush rather as a convenience than as an inspiration. Were he alive to-day, when there is a community life, and some independence of thought and culture, he might have initiated a school of Australian poetry of high distinction. Of other Australian poets Brunton Stephens, and, on occasion, Essex Evans, were close to Kendall, and Victor Daley, who failed, had both inspiration and the gift of poetic language which, unhappily, were suppressed by the conditions of his living, and emerged only in flashes. He might have been the most distinctive of Australian poets, but produced little which will find a place in any carefully compiled anthology.

Two men among the earlier writers -- and one was a Scotchman -- left their mark, not so much by the excellence of their work as by the influence which they have exerted on popular taste, and on the men who cater for it. Gordon introduced the song of the bushman and his horse; Marcus Clarke popularised the convict and the bushranger. Gordon loved bush life and horses, and the most popular of his poems have all the freshness of open air life. Then came a period of idleness on the part of the muse, which was broken, when Mr. A. B. Patterson caught the popular ear with "The Man from Snowy River." The note was taken up, and an infinite number of tunes have been written on it. A few of the versifiers, like Gordon and Mr. Patterson, have been men acquainted with the bush and with horses; others, living in the cities, have exploited the theme for all and more than it is worth. Their readers, most of whom live in England or in Australian cities, are satisfied, and so the jingle passes current as poetry, and we have pictures of the bush and its life which are not recognisable by those who know it, and which find their inspiration in some imagined ever-pending gloom, and ignore the real beauty which belongs even to the sunlit plains. Following the lead of Marcus Clarke, a host of writers dived into old records, or used their imaginations, and so for a considerable period it was almost impossible to find a work of fiction dealing with Australian life which had not as its centre of interest some dreadful story of the convict system, or some highly-coloured account of a bushranger. "Rolfe Boldrewood" reached high-water mark with his romantic "Robbery Under Arms," and lent some glamour to the drab and dismal reality of bushranging. But no other writer came near to that achievement, and probably not one of their books will survive, except an a curiosity of literature. "Rolf Boldrewood" made two other notable contributions, which might have set a fair standard for a distinctively Australian school of fiction. "The Miner's Right" and "The Squatter's Dream" were careful and faithful accounts, in the guise of fiction, of critical periods of Australian history, written by a man who had an extensive first-hand knowledge, derived from his experiences as a pastoralist and a magistrate. Both have fallen into undeserved neglect, and might with advantage, and even profit, be revived.

The latest discovered tendency in Australian literature is one which might make us despair of its future. A group of writers in verse and in prose has taken up the larrikin of Sydney and Melbourne, and has found him a gold mine. The most notable is Mr. C. J. Dennis, whose "Sentimental Bloke" and "Ginger Mick" have achieved a success as extraordinary as it is undoubted. The "larrikin" and his female compeer are not at all admirable persons, and the conditions of their lives are such as to beget sorrow for their degradation rather than to call for its exaltation. But, worst of all is the fact that their doings and their thoughts and their living are made visible by the vehicle of a language as degraded as their lives. It is a sad commentary on the educational system of Australia that books written in the most villainous slang of the dregs of the city populations are to-day easily ahead of all others as "best sellers." Amidst all this noise we do, it is true, catch murmurs of sweeter and nobler singing, and the contributions of Miss Ida Rentoul as artist, and her sister as a writer of verse, are representative of the real Australia and of the true beauty and romance of the bush. But the prevailing tendency of Australian literature is downward.

First published in The Mercury, 15 June 1918

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

Notes: I just love the condescending attitude of the writer here. The essay starts with a barely disguised lament that certain poets didn't live long enough to gain an audience in England - and thereby gain a level of approval - and ends with a frontal assault on any literature deemed to be about the "villainous slang of the dregs of the city populations". Come on, people, literature should be all sweetness and light, uplifting and wholesome, and concern "admirable persons". Got that?

It is a wise child, they say, that knows its own father. There are signs that literary Melbourne to-day is getting wisdom and discoveiing its forefathers. In the 'sixties and 'seventies there lived a number of writers with more unity than any in Melbourne since then. After having been forgotten among us for many years these writers are now once more in the forefront of our minds. The work that several of them did was never published in book form, but there were others who provided us with the beginnings of our permanent work. Writers of fugitive or permanent type, they met together, with a shared enthusiasm, and to look back at their period is to be invigorated by the spectacle. It is becoming more possible to look back. Within recent years there have been complete volumes of Kendall and Gordon, and quite lately the original and very long version of Clarke's "Term of His Natural Life'' has appeared in a book as heavy as a dierctory. Again, two years ago there was a revival of interest in the poet R. H. Horne, called "Onion" Horne in honour of his chief epic poem, of which there was an Australian edition. Others in the group were journalists who had significance in their time, and who did their part in recognising letters as a craft. Such men Gordon had in mind when transposing his own experience he wrote "The Sick Stockrider":-

Even the yarns Jack Hall invented, and the songs Jem Roper sung:
-And where are now Jem Roper and Jack Hall?

George Gordon McCrae.

Some day a solidly imaginative history may be written round this group of 1870 or so, and if it succeeds in including not only those four names of well-known writers, but also some that were, for all their human significance, ephemeral, this success will partly be due to the attentiveness of another distinguished writer and onlooker of the day, George Gordon McCrae. Round about 1870 McCrae, a civil servant, was working on a poem of his own, "The Man in the Iron Mask," but he was in touch with the other writers and following their fortunes. Looking back those figures seem to us to be as firmly established as milestones, which for us they are. In their own eyes, though, they were as frail as sea-foam - they had no hold on life at all. It was because of a desire to give some continuity and steadiness to literary life in Melbourne that the Yorick Club had been formed in 1868, with Marcus Clarke, then aged only 23, as secretary. The club attracted anyone who wrote. It soon included Gordon, and later Kendall. Horne had, I think, by this time returned to England after 17 years in Australia, but his personality still lingered in men's minds, and McCrae particularly kept in touch with him.

Here you had, then, the Yorick Club of Melbourne. Marcus Clarke had by now been several years in Melbourne. Beginning as a bank clerk he had found that his arithmetic was too imaginative, too merely suggestive, to yield to the exact results required by a stern directorate. His talents pointed to journalism. Here again he was to be horrified by a demand for some degree of literalness. Writing brilliantly enough as theatrical reporter for "The Argus," "he one night took it upon himself to criticise a performance which, owing to the indisposition of the chief performer, did not come off." He found himself no longer on the staff, but he continued as a contributor, writing also as the "Peripatetic Philosopher" for "The Australasian." Versatile, precocious, brilliant, he ran a satirical journal, "Humbug," in 1869, gathering together the best wits of the day and evoking what otherwise would have remained unwritten. Kendall was with him in this to some extent, but when it broke down - and it could not last long - Kendall went to Sydney, and Clarke made his famous journey to Southern Tasmania, gathering material and impressions for his gigantic serial that was to run - or rather to hop intermittently - through the "Australian Journal" soon after.

Kendall, Gordon, and Clarke.

As for Gordon he came and went. A note, he wrote to Clarke in Melbourne has been often quoted:-

Yorick Club.
Dear Clarke. - Scott's Hotel, not later than 9.30 sharp. Moore will be there. Riddock and Lyon, Baker and the Powers, beside us; so if "the Old One" were to cast a net - eh? - Yours,
A. LINDSAY GORDON

It is Improbable that their wickedness consisted of anything worse than poverty. In nouveau riche Melbourne of 1870, though,poverty was peculiarly unbearable. Writers, moreover, were not, resigned to it. They actually expected to make a living as wriiters. In later periods that expectation, in our commercial civilisation, has almost always been abandoned. Poets have made their living at anything else, from shopkeeping to teaching or politics, and have done their real work, their life-work, in what time they could call their own. To this attitude Kendall, Gordon, and Clarke were not resigned. Undeterred by the record of Poe's treatment in America, they were astonished, as Kendall put it, by

the lot austere
That waits the man of letters here.

Before the end of 1870 Gordon was to declare his assets at 1/ and put a bullet through his brain. Kendall died some years later exhausted by the struggle. Clarke, barely 35, died in 1880, his death being directly due to a succession of financial troubles, not wholly his own, with which he ought never to have been burdened. The fact is that the literary group had not recognised the nature of the plutocracy in which it lived. Money was to them an unnecessary evil, a matter for jest or for despair. When it was a jest, they formed a new club, the Cave of Adullam; "to this only a very select body of members was admitted, the selectness in this case necessitating that a member should be happily impecunious, and, if possible, be hunted by the myrmidons of the law.'' When it was not a jest - well, we can follow the actual brief lives, and the deaths, of Gordon, Kendall, and Clarke.

Such were our literary "fathers." ln a sense they died leaving no posterity; we have begun again on another footing, both financial and literary. Yet if they were alive to-day some of their phrases, some of their liveliest hopes, would be our own; and the world they lived in was this Melbourne that we know.

First published in The Argus, 31 May 1930

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

[It's been a while since I last posted in this series. Put it down to real life intruding, and once I fall off the treadmill it can be hard to get back on it again.]

By any criteria Henry Kendall's "Bell-Birds" must rank as one of the most popular poems written in Australia's literary history.  Austlit, "The Australian Literature Resource", lists 32 entries in its publication history; possibly ranking only with Dorothea's Mackellar's "My Country", Paterson's "Waltzing Matilda" and one or two others in its universality.  And yet it is not a poem I remember from my childhood - the Paterson and the Mackellar certainly, but not this one.

There is a lovely lilting feel to this work.  The rhymes generally read as occurring naturally (though a query may be made against "sedges/ledges" in the first verse), and the flow and rhythm are reminiscent of a warm, lazy spring day. 

If, as seems reasonable, Kendall wrote this a year or so before its publication in his collection, Leaves from Australian Forests, in 1869, then he was probably living in New South Wales at his happiest.  This was prior to his disastrous sojourn in Melbourne, the death of his young daughter and his descent into bankruptcy and mental illness.  There appears to be no despair or despondency in this work, only the wonder of nature and joy of life.

According to Wikipedia, Bellbirds are so-called "because they feed almost exclusively on the dome-like coverings of certain psyllid bugs, referred to as 'bell lerps', that feed on eucalyptus sap from the leaves", and not because of their distinctive tinkling, bell-like sound.  And yet Kendall refers to "The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing."  Ringing, yes, but certainly not running.  But this is a minor quibble about a poem that deserves its place in any collection of classic Australian poetry. 

Text: "Bell-Birds" by Henry Kendall

Author bio: Australian Dictionary of Biography 

There are also a number of posts on this weblog regarding Kendall, his poetry and his life, which can be found here.

Publishing history: This poem was first published (so far as we can tell) in Kendall's verse collection, Leaves from Australian Forests, in 1869.  Subsequently it appeared in The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse in 1918 (and its later editions), and in Selections from Australian Poets compiled by Bertram Stevens in 1925. After that it was reprinted in just about every major retrospective Australian poetry anthology. 

Next five poems in the book:

"Are You the Cove?" by Joseph Furphy ("Tom Collins")

"How McDougal Topped the Score" by Thomas E. Spencer

"The Wail of the Waiter" by Marcus Clarke

"Where the Pelican Builds" by Mary Hannay Foott

"Catching the Coach" by Alfred T. Chandler ("Spinifex")

Note: this post forms part of my series on the poems contained in the anthology 100 Australian Poems You Need to Know edited by Jamie Grant.  You can read the other posts in this series here.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BRISBANE COURIER.

Sir,-I must depend upon your courtesy to allow me in space in your columns for this letter. I wish to deny the authorship of certain silly verses recently printed in Queensland newspapers in association with my name. I wish it to be distinctly understood by the duped editors of the journals in question, that I have never been north of this colony, and that I am not a contributor to Queensland prints. I suppose that the author of the miserable hoax, perpetrated in the verses refered to, intended to be funny at my expense, but I am sure that the editor of the Courier will agree with me in submitting that my friend's joke is a poor thing after all. A parody of my style would have been perfectly legitimate but a forgery extending to a stranger's name is simply an act of impertinence -Yours,

HENRY KENDALL.
Colonial Secretary's Office, Sydney, August 4

First published in The Brisbane Courier, 8 August 1868

[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

"We were young when you were with us, life and love were happy things
To your father and your mother, are the angels gave you wings" - ( Kendall )

The recent death in Sydney of Charlotte Kendall, the widow of the poet Henry Kendall, and her burial in the grave where he lies in Sydney, recalls the fact that their first child, Araluen, who died in 1870, aged 13 months lies buried in a neglected grave in the Melbourne General Cemetery. The story of the sickness and death of this little child who was named after the New South Wales stream whose beauty always lingered in the poet's memory, and whose death inspired one of his most beautiful and pathetic poems provides one of the saddest pages of Kendall's life. In 1860 he migrated from Sydney to Melbourne hoping that away from dissolute companions he might successfully battle against his inherited weakness for drink, and trusting also as Melbourne was at that date much larger than Sydney, that he might find more scope and encouragement for literary work. He received so hearty a welcome that a fortnight later he sent for his wife and baby daughter. A home was secured opposite the Carlton gardens, and for a time his prospects were bright. Mr George Robertson heartened him by arranging the publiation of "Leaves from an Australian Forest," the appearance of which was afterwards described by Alexander Sutherland as "one of the most memorable events in Australian literature." He found many who, through admiration of his genius were anxious to assist him, and numerous poems from his pen appeared in the columns of "The Argus," "The Australasian," and other Melbourne papers. The income thus derived, however, was fitful, and his peculiar temperament and unsteady habits precluded his engaging either in ordinary journalistic work or other constant employment. He was soon forced to leave the Carlton house, and moved with his wife and sickly baby, first to a cheap tenement in Fitzroy, and then to a still cheaper one in Collingwood. Bowed down by poverty, disappointment, and anxiety, all his good resolves melted away. He became more and more unsteady, less capable of work and ultimately the wretched family were forced to hide their heads in a tiny cottage in Swan street, Richmond, where little Araluen, notwithstanding the assiduous attention of Dr Nield, after much suffering died on February 2, 1870. Mrs Kendall afterwards said that the wailing notes of the dying child haunted her husband throughout all the rest of his life. He wrote -

"In dreams I always meet
The phantom of a wailing child."

The poverty stricken poet was unable to pay for his child's burial, and in his reminiscences he wrote -

I only hear the brutal curse
Of landlord clamouring for his pay,
And yonder is the pauper's hearse
That comes to take a child away
Apart, and with the half grey head
Of sudden age, again I see
The father writing by the dead
To earn the undertaker's fee.

Little Araluen was buried in what was then known as "No Mans Land," in the north east corner of the Melbourne General Cemetery, near the corner of Lygon and Macpherson streets. Lovers of the poet know well the pathetic, heart-broken farewell of the parents to the little grave.

"Take this rose and very gently place it on the tender deep
Mosses where our little darling, Araluen lies asleep,
Put the blossoms close to baby. Kneel with me, my love, and pray,
We must leave the bird we've buried, say good bye to her to-day.
In the shadow of our trouble we must go to other lands,
And the flowers we have fosteredl will be left to other hands."
"Ah! the saddest thought in leaving baby in this bush alone,
Is that we have not been able on her craie to raise a stone,
We have been too poor to do it, but, my darling, never mind -
God is in His gracious heaven, and His sun and rain are kind;
They will dress the spot with beauty, they will make the grasses grow;
Many winds will lull our birdie, many songs will come and go.
Here the blue-eyed Spring will linger, here the shining mouth will stay
Like a friend, by Araluen, when we two are far away."

Alas, the little grave has remained untended ever since. It has recently been traced by Mr. Goddard, a member of the Australian Literature Society who discovered that in the same allotment are buried no fewer than 10 other little pauper babies, their ages ranging from 10 days to 10 months. I would suggest that lovers of Kendall in Melbourne might well undertake the responsibility of putting the grave in order, and erecting a simple marble tablet on the grave of his so dearly loved and mourned baby girl, and so fulfil the heart-longing of the poet when he wrote:-

"Let us go, for night is falling, leave the darling with her flowers;
Other hands will come and tend them - other friends in other hours."

First published in The Argus, 22 November 1924 [Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

The song that once I dreamed about,
   The tender, touching thing,
As radiant as the rose without --
   The love of wind and wing --
The perfect verses, to the tune
   Of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon,
   Remain unwritten yet.

It is too late to write them now --
   The ancient fire is cold;
No ardent lights illume the brow,
   As in the days of old.
I cannot dream the dream again;
   But when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain,
   I think I hear its words.

I think I hear the echo still
   Of long-forgotten tones,
When evening winds are on the hill
   And sunset fires the cones;
But only in the hours supreme,
   With songs of land and sea,
The lyrics of the leaf and stream,
   This echo comes to me.

No longer doth the earth reveal
   Her gracious green and gold;
I sit where youth was once, and feel
   That I am growing old.
The lustre from the face of things
   Is wearing all away;
Like one who halts with tired wings,
   I rest and muse to-day.

There is a river in the range
   I love to think about;
Perhaps the searching feet of change
   Have never found it out.
Ah! oftentimes I used to look
   Upon its banks, and long
To steal the beauty of that brook
   And put it in a song.

I wonder if the slopes of moss,
   In dreams so dear to me --
The falls of flower, and flower-like floss --
   Are as they used to be!
I wonder if the waterfalls,
   The singers far and fair,
That gleamed between the wet, green walls,
   Are still the marvels there!

Ah! let me hope that in that place
   The old familiar things
To which I turn a wistful face
   Have never taken wings.
Let me retain the fancy still
   That, past the lordly range,
There always shines, in folds of hill,
   One spot secure from change!

I trust that yet the tender screen
   That shades a certain nook,
Remains, with all its gold and green,
   The glory of the brook.
It hides a secret to the birds
   And waters only known:
The letters of two lovely words --
   A poem on a stone.

Perhaps the lady of the past
   Upon these lines may light,
The purest verses, and the last
   That I may ever write.
She need not fear a word of blame --
   Her tale the flowers keep --
The wind that heard me breathe her name
   Has been for years asleep.

But in the night, and when the rain
   The troubled torrent fills,
I often think I see again
   The river in the hills;
And when the day is very near,
   And birds are on the wing,
My spirit fancies it can hear
   The song I cannot sing.

First published in The Bulletin, 9 July 1898

Sir Herbert Warren a few months ago delivered a lecture before the Royal Colonial Institute on overseas poetry. The full text appears in "United Empire" for July. Speaking of Australian poets, Sir Herbert says:

Australian poetry, like Canadian, has a history of about a century. Baron Field's "First Fruits of Australian Poetry" was printed in Sydney in 1810. But it really began in 1842, with the publication of the first volume of verse by Sir Henry Parkes, that great poetic Imperialist, the protagonist of Australian Federation. The first native-born Australian poet, Charles Harpur, wrote at any rate one really good poem, but one poem does not make a poet, though I think Charles Harpur was one. He,too, published first in the "forties." Then came the "Golden Age" of Australia. The rush to the diggings attracted poets and artists as well as soldiers of fortune. Among these were two at least of the famous pre-Raphaelite set, friends of D. G. Rossetti, Woolner the sculptor, and Lionel Michael; R. H. Horne, the friend of Keats and author of "Orion"; Henry Kingsley and Adam Lindsay Gordon. Woolmer and Horne soon went back, but Michael remained and became the "only begetter" of Henry Clarence Kendall, one of the sweetest of Australia's early singers.

If Kendall's pensive note was more poetic, Gordon, the gentleman-rider and pugilist, "caught on" far more, and he became, some say, the most characteristic and national poet of his adopted home; certainly the best-known poet in and out of Australia then, and possibly even now. Australia, like Attica, is the land of the horse, and Gordon's religion of sport, his dash of scholarship, often dear to the sporting man, his swinging metres, gave him vogue in the bush and the bar-room, and wherever the "Billy boiled" and its "cup that cheers but not inebriates," as well as other cups, also associated with poetry, were quaffed. "How We Beat the Favourite," the "Sick Stock Rider" - it is enough to mention their names. His poetry and his philosophy of life gave a ply to Australian literature which still persists, and he became the father of a whole line of Australian poets. The best known is, or was, the most popular of living-Australian poets, also a Scot - Andrew Barton Paterson. "The Man from Snowy River" and "Rio Grande's Last Race" are both "horsey" poems. They are quite excellent, but more interesting to me are his Bush Stories or Songs, which depict Australian life. "Clancy of the Overflow," "An Idyll of Dandaloo," "The Two Devines." I find them delightful campfire yarns, while "In the Driving Days" is at once delicious and touching. James Brunton Stephens, also Scotch in origin, John Farrell (Irish, via Buenos Ayres), Victor James Daley (Irish), who wrote Kendall's epitaph--I should like to give speciments of all, but time forbids, and I pass on to a younger generation and another strain. George Essex Evans, a Welshman, educated at Haverfordwest, who went out to Queensland in 1881, seems to me the most real and comprehensive Australian poet of his generation. I wonder he is not better known, that such a volume, for instance, as the "Secret Key" is not better known. He has many sides and themes, he understands what the mysterious realm of poetry is. He holds the "secret key" to it himself.

It was fortunate that his was the Ode chosen for Commonwealth Day. It is a Laureate piece, but the piece of a Laureate worthy to live. Especially did he respond as so many Australians did with both sword and song to the first real call of Empire that came to them in the South African struggle. That struggle need wake no bitter memories now. Even if it did, Essex Evans' poems are not of the kind to do so. "Eland's River," "The Lion's Whelps," "To the Irish Dead." As I have, often said, the poets are more prescient than the statesmen. Evans saw what was coming, and warned his country-men to prepare:

Prepare ere falls the hour of fate,
When death-shells rain their iron hate,
   And all in vain our love is poured;
For dark aslant the Northern Gate
   I see the shadow of the sword.

But the South African war is ancient history to many, and even Essex Evans, though he died only in 1909, a prophet though he was, is no longer a poet of Australia of to-day. Can I give you, in my brief time, any specimen of the poetry that really belongs to what the French call "the hour that is?" What is Australia like to-day in peace and in war, at home and in the field? What do her best leaders wish her to be and what is she? Let me take some very different utterances. One thing she certainly is - imperial. She went into this fight, heart and soul. She has achieved heroic and poetic deeds. Such was the victorious fight of the Sydney with the Emden. Such was the unvictorious but heroic and tragic landing at Gallipoli. Read it in the Thucydidean narrative of the English poet, Mr. Masefield. Read it in "The Landing in the Dawn - Anzac Day," by John Sandes, of the "Sydney Daily Telegraph." Her leaders, and her poets, sacred and secular, have given her their message.

What are Australia's most realistic spontaneous poems? Some little time ago, through the kindness of Messrs. Angus and Robertson, I was sent, as the most characteristic and up-to-date and realistic Australian poem, "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke," by C. J. Dennis, pub. 1915. It has a preface by Mr. Henry Lawson, himself an excellent and notable Australian poet, and is very cleverly illustrated by Mr. Hal Gye. "Bloke" is given in the Oxford Dictionary as a slang substantive. Well, I knew Australia was a slangy country, and, like most lovers of poetry, I am rather fond of slang in its proper place. I must confess, however, I was a little startled by the Sentimental Bloke and his Songs. But when I really came to read it I found that, in whatever language it was written, it is real poetry, a charming old story, the old, old story, told in a new way.

John Sandes is an Oxford man, a pupil once of my own. So is Archibald Strong, a younger writer of real mark, an Elizabethan of to-day. I should like to speak to you of them, and also of Will Ogilvie, yet another of the "Centaur" poets of Australia. But time forbids.

First Published in The Argus, 21 September 1918
[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]

I.

I purposed once to take my pen and write,
   Not songs, like some, tormented and awry
   With passion, but a cunning harmony
Of words and music caught from glen and height,
And lucid colours born of woodland light
   And shining places where the sea-streams lie.
But this was when the heat of youth glowed white,
   And since I've put the faded purpose by.
I have no faultless fruits to offer you
   Who read this book; but certain syllables
   Herein are borrowed from unfooted dells
And secret hollows dear to noontide dew;
And these at least, though far between and few,
   May catch the sense like subtle forest spells.

II.

So take these kindly, even though there be
   Some notes that unto other lyres belong,
   Stray echoes from the elder sons of song;
And think how from its neighbouring native sea
The pensive shell doth borrow melody.
   I would not do the lordly masters wrong
   By filching fair words from the shining throng
Whose music haunts me as the wind a tree!
   Lo, when a stranger in soft Syrian glooms
Shot through with sunset treads the cedar dells,
And hears the breezy ring of elfin bells
   Far down by where the white-haired cataract booms,
He, faint with sweetness caught from forest smells,
   Bears thence, unwitting, plunder of perfumes.

First published in The Australian Town and Country Journal, 11 October 1879

On August 1 will occur the 40th anniversary of the death of Henry Kendall. Though not our first native born poet - at least one, Charles Harpur, preceded him - Kendall was the first of our long line of singers whose inspiration is the charm of nature. His paternal grandfather came to New South Wales as a lay missionary in 1809, and in 1814 went in that capacity to New Zealand. After a few years' service among the Maoris he resigned from missionary work and went to South America, to which place he was accompanied by his son Basil - the father of Henry. In 1826 they returned to Australia, and the older Kendall received as a reward for his missionary labours, a grant of 1,200 acres of land in the Ulladulla district, towards the south coast of New South Wales. On part of this estate Henry Kendall was born in 1841. Five years after the poet's birth the family went to live in the Clarence River district. Here, in an isolated home, Henry received from his father his early education. The future poet was only 11 years of age when his father died of consumption, and the family of five children was scattered. Henry and another brother were sent to the home of a relative near their birthplace, where Henry had "fellowship with gorge and glen," the lasting impression of which is shown in much of his poetry. At the age of 13 he was given a place as cabin boy in a small brig owned by one of his uncles. He, however, had not the venturesome spirit of his father, who during his brief stay in South America saw service in the Brazilian Navy in a struggle against Portugal to which Brazil up to this time was subject. During his two years of seafaring Kendall visited among other paces the Marquesas and Japan, but he hated the life and was glad to escape from it. For a while he held a position in a Sydney drapery establishment, and later became clerk in the office of James Lionel Michael, the poet who was a solicitor. Michael was a most kindly employer and showed the young clerk the use of his library and encouraged him in his literary work.

When Kendall was 21 his first volume of verse was published. A little later he was appointed to the New South Wales Lands Department at a salary of £150 per annum, his qualification, according to the official notice of his appointment, being "his literary promise " A couple of years later he was transferred to the Colonial Secretary's office at an increased salary. In 1869 he resigned his Government appointment, intending to devote himself wholly to literary work. He came to live in Melbourne, where he worked at different tasks. At one time he was employed in the office of the Government Statist, but, probably "haunted by the sound of waterfalls two hundred miles away," he deserted the position after three days. About this time his second book, "Leaves from an Australian Forest," was printed, but it commanded only a poor sale. Kendall's couple of years in Melbourne was a period of sorrow and poverty. He gave way to drink, a tendency to which he may have inherited from both parents. For this sin he did ample penance in several poems, particularly in one in which he describes "the dreadful portion of a drunkard's home." To add to his sorrows he lost his young daughter. In 1871 he returned to Sydney, but trouble still dogged his footsteps, and he had to be placed in an asylum - the shadow of 1872, as he speaks of it. He soon recovered his mental balance and engaged in literary work for a little while. Then he accepted a position as accountant in a timber business at a place called Camden Haven, where, with his family, he spent some of the best years of his life. In 1870 Kendall won a prize of £100 for a poem on the Sydney International Exhibition, and a year later his third book, "Songs from the Mountains," was published under a subscription arrangement which guaranteed it's financial success. In 1881 Sir Henry Parkes - ever one of his good friends - created for him the position of Inspector of State forests, but he had held it only a few months when he was afflicted with consumption, from which he died in 1882, at the age of 41. Kendall had no ethical message for his time, the only person he seems to have wished to reform was himself. He was essentially a lyric poet, and wrote with exquisite beauty of the charm of mossy springs and streams and waterfalls - "songs interwoven of lights and of laughters." In one of his poems he says that he longs to steal the beauty of the brook, and put it in his song, and he went as near accomplishing this impossible task as any poet, and in the well known lines on the Bellbirds he seems to have succeeded in capturing some of the wild singers' notes for his poem. He also had the happy gift of being able to paint a scene in a phrase or two. He pictures autumn as a gipsy standing in the gardens splashed from heel to thigh, and winter as a woodman who comes "to lop the leaves in wind and rain," and elsewhere as a departing wearisome guest. Spring is blue-eyed and million-coloured; summer has "large, luxurious eyes," and dances "a shining singer through the tasselled corn," and the wild oak is a wan Tithonus of the wood "aghast at Immortality in chains." In Kendall's poetry there are "notes that unto other lyrics belong, "and there is no doubt that he was influenced by Wordsworth and Tennyson. In one of the prefatory sonnets, in his second book, he excuses the "stray echoes" in these words -

Lo, when a stranger in soft Syrian glooms
   Shot through with sunset, treads the cedar dells,
   And hears the breezy ring of elfin bells
Far down be where the white-haired cataract booms,
   He, faint with sweetness caught from forest smells,
Bears thence, unwitting, plunder of perfumes.

Mountains, whether seen in their mightiness with "the royal robes of morning" on their heads, or with broken lights upon their gorges and streams, were always an inspiration to Kendall, and the address "To a Mountain," which prefaced his second book, is one of the finest pieces of blank verse written in Australia. Though he also sings of "the grand hosanna of the sea," he has but little affection for it, perhaps the result of the two unhappy years he spent on his uncle's brig. In his journalistic days Kendall wrote some humorous verse, and though he did not care for horse racing, he also wrote "How the Melbourne Cup was Won," but he was much more in his element when singing of the running of a mountain stream among shadowy boulder-strewn ways. In the memorial lines on Adam Lindsay Gordon he speaks of his fellow-poet's work as having "the deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone of forest winds in March." The same may be said of Kendall's own poetry. Through the best of it is a note of disappointment and regret. He was a man of a somewhat melancholy mood, and this has been accenuated by his early sorrows and the tribulation of his later years. "Some men grow strong with trouble," but it was not so with Kendall, and even in the poems, written in his happiest times, there are sounds of "strong authentic sorrow."

Kendall frequently speaks in his writings of the austere lot that fell to the men of letters of his day, but he seems to have forgotten some of the favours he received. At 21, on the ground of literary promise, he was appointed to a Government clerk ship, and when then promise showed sign of fulfilment he was transferred to a better position, and in after years a special post was created for him by the Government of the day. In the present age the creation of Government posts for favoured individuals is not altogether unheard of, but they are not usually for literary men. His early books were not commercial successes, but better writers had known similar experiences. However, probably no poet whose work has not mean financial gain has found much comfort in the reflection that "Paradise Lost" brought its author only £5. Kendall had, at any rate, the satisfaction of knowing that his poetry was appreciated by all the literary people of Australia - a reward that some of his followers have been denied. Undoubtedly, Kendall suffered a bitter Gethsemane, due to causes quite beyond his control. His inherited weakness brought on him penalties of destitution and suffering, and increased his other unfortunate inheritance of a tempermental melancholy, and it is doubtful if success as a poet would have saved him from the sorrow which was his lot during much of his life.

First published in The Argus, 29 July 1922

Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.

[You can read the rest of the poem quoted here.]

Had I gone first he surely would have writ
   Some kindly words in loving memory --
Touching a drear old history -- clothing it
   With grace, as ivy leaves -- and aged tree

But he has breasted first the mighty wave
   Which flows around Eternity, and left
Blind seekers still to wonder and to crave,
   With clamorous thoughts, for light -- of light bereft.

I see the flying form of youth, the sun
   In radiant limbs -- distraught with blind desire --
And Daphne's hurrying shade, which seeks to shun
   His passionate looks that breathe destructive fire.

Two ghastly forms within a pit I see
   Sawing till doom; -- and stifled groans I hear
From shadows passing round a baleful tree,
   Until my creeping flesh is quick with fear.

And then, beyond the fiery cones of hills --
   That sing to the wild main in sympathy --
I see in mossy rents the morning rills
   That march in midnight thunder to the sea.

While from Kerguelen, on a stormy main,
   Swept by remorseless winds which scourge the Pole,
A voice comes echoing, as in grief or pain,
   "Oh! listen to a brother's passing soul;

I meet that Infinite of which we dreamed,
   The mighty mysteries to comprehend
That fold life round, until it almost seemed
   That God Himself had ceased to be our friend.

Beyond the stars there is a rest serene,
   Which neither love, nor fame, nor happiness
Can ever stir with hints of what has been.
   Nor make that gift supreme, or more or less!

Awhile, old friend! and then we meet once
more,    Not in the cruel conflicts of the day.
Till then, adieu! the struggle now is o'er --
   The wearied spirit passes on its way."

First published in Australian Town and Country Journal, 5 August 1882
Note: Henry Kendall died on 1st August 1882.

Where Harpur lies, the rainy streams,
   And wet hill-heads, and hollows weeping,
Are swift with wind, and white with gleams,
   And hoarse with sounds of storms unsleeping.

Fit grave it is for one whose song
   Was tuned by tones he caught from torrents,
And filled with mountain breaths, and strong,
   Wild notes of falling forest currents.

So let him sleep, the rugged hymns
   And broken lights of woods above him!
And let me sing how sorrow dims
   The eyes of those that used to love him.

As April in the wilted wold
   Turns faded eyes on splendours waning,
What time the latter leaves are old,
   And ruin strikes the strays remaining;

So we that knew this singer dead,
   Whose hands attuned the harp Australian,
May set the face and bow the head,
   And mourn his fate and fortunes alien.

The burden of a perished faith
   Went sighing through his speech of sweetness,
With human hints of time and death,
   And subtle notes of incompleteness.

But when the fiery power of youth
   Had passed away and left him nameless,
Serene as light, and strong as truth,
   He lived his life, untired and tameless.

And, far and free, this man of men,
   With wintry hair and wasted feature,
Had fellowship with gorge and glen,
   And learned the loves and runes of Nature.

Strange words of wind, and rhymes of rain,
   And whispers from the inland fountains
Are mingled, in his various strain,
   With leafy breaths of piny mountains.

But as the undercurrents sigh
   Beneath the surface of a river,
The music of humanity
   Dwells in his forest-psalms for ever.

No soul was he to sit on heights
   And live with rocks apart and scornful:
Delights of men were his delights,
   And common troubles made him mournful.

The flying forms of unknown powers
   With lofty wonder caught and filled him;
But there were days of gracious hours
   When sights and sounds familiar thrilled him.

The pathos worn by wayside things,
   The passion found in simple faces,
Struck deeper than the life of springs
   Or strength of storms and sea-swept places.

But now he sleeps, the tired bard,
   The deepest sleep; and, lo! I proffer
These tender leaves of my regard,
   With hands that falter as they offer.

First published in The Sydney Mail, July 1868
Charles Harpur died on 10th June, 1868.

At rest! Hard by the margin of that sea
Whose sounds are mingled with his noble verse
Now lies the shell that never more will
house The fine strong spirit of my gifted friend.
Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,
A shining soul with syllables of fire,
Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim
To be their own; the one who did not seem
To know what royal place awaited him
Within the Temple of the Beautiful,
Has passed away; and we who knew him sit
Aghast in darkness, dumb with that great grief
Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend;
While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,
The night wind sings its immemorial hymn,
And sobs above a newly-covered grave.
The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived
That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps
The splendid fire of English chivalry
From dying out; the one who never wronged
A fellow man; the faithful friend who judged
The many, anxious to be loved of him
By what he saw, and not by what he heard,
As lesser spirits do; the brave, great soul
That never told a lie, or turned aside
To fly from danger -- he, as I say, was one
Of that bright company this sin-stained world
Can ill afford to lose.

                  They did not know,
The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse
And revelled over ringing major notes,
The mournful meaning of the undersong
Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes
The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone
Of forest winds in March; nor did they think
That on that healthy-hearted man there lay
The wild specific curse which seems to cling
Forever to the Poet's twofold life!

To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid
Two years ago on Lionel Michael's grave
A tender leaf of my regard; yea, I
Who culled a garland from the flowers of song
To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,
The sad disciple of a shining band
Now gone -- to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name
I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true
That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul
Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop
From his high seat to take the offering,
And read it with a sigh for human friends,
In human bonds, and grey with human griefs.

And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,
I stand to-day as lone as he who saw
At nightfall, through the glimmering moony mist,
The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,
And strained in vain to hear the going voice.

First published in The Australasian, 1 July 1870

Oh, Mother Nature, beat thy breasts and weep
For him thine ardent lover gone to sleep!
Embrace in loving arms
Thy hierophant, the chanter of thy psalms!

He loved thy daedal forests; yes, he felt
That they were thine own temples, so he dwelt
Within them, dwelt with thee.
Great Mother, thou shouldst sing his elegy!

Ye sentinels of earth, ye hills that stand
'Tween earth and sky, like giants that command
The slopes to heaven, weep
For him, our late-voiced brother gone to sleep!

Ye winds, whose strong pulsations filled his rhymes
With varied cadences, that swelled to chimes
Or moved with stately tread
Like armies, wail for him, the harper dead!

In tears, ye Austral mothers, teach his name
And songs to all your little ones; the flame
That burnt within his breast
Should burn in theirs; he loved his country best.

Ye sturdy sons of energy, whose ways
Are cast among the backwoods, in his lays
He sang your hopes, our fears, Your daring deeds;
then weep, he claims your tears.

And thou, sweet Spring, he loved thee, bring soft showers,
And balmy airs, and amaranthine flow'rs,
And bursting blossoms throw
Upon his grave -- there let them ever blew.

Great Mother Nature, beat thy breats and weep
For him, thy lute-voiced lover gone to sleep!
Embrace in loving arms
Thy hierophant, the chanter of thy psalms!

First published in The Bulletin, 26 August 1882

Note: Henry
Kendall died on 1st August, 1882, aged 43.

Those who are still able to read and appreciate poetry and verse are meeting to celebrate the placing of a tablet in Westminster Abbey to the memory of Adam Lindsay Gordon. An Australian poet has yet to win a place there. Gordon was an English poet who gained the inspiration for his best work in his homeland, and who wrote as if his life in Australia were that of an exile. His popularity is probably due to his chivalrous sportsmanship, his galloping verses, his somewhat gloomy sentimentalism and the "froth and bubble" type of wisdom that gets applause almost anywhere. Australia's own poets are comparatively neglected. Henry Lawson -- who touched poetic heights above Gordon and occasionally descended to deeper depths of doggerel -- is honored by a few loyal societies, and his best lines and thoughts gradually enter into common expression. He was the poet of the bush humanity rather than of nature. His rebellious heart was moved by a great human sympathy. Another and greater Australian poet -- Kendall, whose lyrics of nature flow with a Tennysonian facility and felicity and compare occasionally with those of Shelley -- is relatively neglected.

The anniversary of Kendall's birthday April 18, 1841 -- was not observed. For every portrait of him in our little private libraries there are fifty of Gordon, the English singer, and twenty of Lawson. He was Australian first and last, although influenced by the culture of the older lands. Thomas Kendall, a Lincolnshire schoolmaster, came to Sydney in 1809. His adventurous son, Basil, the poet's father, was probably born there or in New Zealand, where Thomas spent a few years. The poet himself was born in a primitive cottage near the agricultural village of Milton, on the New South Wales south coast. The Kendalls were men of education and wide reading. On the south coast, and on the north also, amongst the hill forests and the deep, cool glens, the music of nature haunted Henry Kendall "as the wind a tree." In the lonely, beautiful places he drew syllables from "unfooted dells and secret hollows dear to noontide dew" -- "words and music caught from glen and height and lucid colors born of woodland light."

The discussion of Centenary odes and lyrics, yet to be, gives additional interest to Kendall's work when he, too, attempted the terrible task of writing to order. His first essay in this kind of versification was on the occasion of the Sydney Exhibition of the early eighties, when he was the author of the prize ode. The poem is an enraptured survey of Australian exploration and colonisation from the earliest days up to the occasion by which it was suggested. The stilted heroics and the free citation of mythological characters and analogies suggest Kendall wrote with a grim unflinching purpose. There are many fine lines; Kendall never entirely failed. Before a concluding metrical invocation, resonant and sincere, he glorifies his native land.

"Her crown will shine beside the crown of kings
Who shape the seasons, rule the course of things;
The fame of her across the years to be
Will spread like light on a surpassing sea;
And graced with glory, girt with power august,
Her life will last till all things turn to dust."

Not long afterwards Kendall wrote a series of cantos for the opening of the Melbourne International Exhibition. These were written for music, and are notable for a bigger share of the poet's own naturalness--

"Dressed is the beautiful city -- the spires of it
Burn in the firmament stately and still;
Forest has vanished -- the wood and lyres of it,
Lute sof the sea-wind and harps of the hill.
This is the region and here is the bay by it,
Collins, the deathless, beheld in a dream;
Flinders and Fawkner, our forefathers grey, by it
Paused in the hush of a season supreme."

The poem closes with a deep reverence characteristic of the writer -

"To Thee be the glory, All-Bountiful Giver!
The song that we sing is an anthem of Thee,
Whose blessing is shed on thy people for ever,
Whose love is like beautiful light on the sea.
Behold, with high sense of Thy mercy unsleeping,
We come to Thee, kneel to Thee, praise Thee and pray,
O Lord, in whose hand is the strength that is keeping
The storm from the wave and the night from the day!"

With slight verbal amendments to suit the occasion and dates, this poem might be recommended to musical composers and the Centenary Committee. There is a beauty of words, thought and imagery in Kendall which can be made an infinitely greater Australian influence. The best of all are the lyrics of nature, some of which have happily found their way into the schoolbooks. They throb with the pulse of the Australian bushland; they limn its beauties with crystal clearness; they are alive with melody. "Bell-Birds," "September in Australia," "After Many Days," "Illa Creek," "Araluen," "Coogee," and a dozen others ought to be "familiar in our mouths as household words."

Our first lyrical poet was not entirely engrossed with the beauty and song of his native woodland. Although his description of the Melbourne Cup does not suggest that the race was run at a thrilling speed, few verses travel faster or with a more energetic lilt than the description of the thirst-maddened beasts "On a Cattle Track." The poet's gentle soul was once moved to write an Australian war-song. It calls upon Australians to "whet the swords you have in keeping; Forward, stand to do or die," but it is not poetry, and as for the swords we have in keeping, it is hardly accurate.

As the literary sense of Australia becomes more discriminating Kendall will rise to a place still higher in the minds of students and readers. If there be a place for another club, it might be formed to discuss the great New South Welshman and other Australian poets of nature who have felt the Kendall influence.

First published as an editorial in The Herald, 5 May 1934

He was the poet of the mountains and tall timber, and time has acclaimed him our greatest. Others have sung of burning plains under a fierce sun, But Henry Clarence Kendall preferred the grandeur of the big hills or the mystery of unfooted dells.

And no wonder! He was born among them at Ulladulla, N.S.W. on April 8, 1841, along with his twin brother, Basil. He was rocked in a cradle made from the trunk of a fallen forest giant, and his first consciousness was of high hills and trees.

And in later life he drifted back to the big timber as all who love it must, and he was with it when his last illness developed, and he went away to die.

Tragedy seems to be the lot of all poets. Kendall knew it early in life when his father, a delicate, sensitive soul, closed his eyes for the last time. Basil Kendall began with a goodly heritage at Ulladulla, N.S.W., but he lost that when his poet son was only four and went to the Clarence River district to eke out a small living. Henry was 10 when his father died.

The widow and family of two sons and three daughters moved to Illawarra and in this beautiful district the young poet found Nature in her most inspiring mood.

Cabin Boy in Whaler

At 14 we find Henry Kendall the cabin boy on a whaler belonging to one of his uncles. In this vessel he lived for two years in Antarctic waters was glad to return. His was not the robust type which seeks physical adventure. Rather was he fitted for explorations of the mind, and these he pursued.

He found work of various kinds in Sydney, and was clerk to James Lionel Michael, a solicitor of Grafton, himself a man of letters. All the time Kendall read and wrote.

His shyness was a torture to him. Once his employer called on him to deliver a lecture in a Grafton hall. When the time arrived young Henry bolted and Michael had to deliver it himself.

Kendall did not last long at the law. He worked his way back to Sydney, where some of his poems had been appearing. Sir Henry Parkes, then editing the Empire, took an interest in him, and later found him work in the Survey Office and the Colonial Secretary's Department.

He wearied again, and set out in 1869 for Melbourne, where he hoped to live by his pen. Here he remained some time. He was the friend of Gordon and Marcus Clarke.

Tragedy pursued him again. His daughter, Araluen, died. Heartbroken, he moved back to Sydney, and a clerkship in a timber company. Then he was sent out to the big timber by the same firm. Possibly the most contented years of his life were spent in the North Coast timber area, for he was back to his beloved forest once more.

Then came another Government position as forests inspector, and it was while filling it that he caught a cold which turned to tuberculosis.

Born April 18, 1841; died August 1, 1882. Only 41! But if his life was short his work is immortal.

Poetry of Effort

Australia has not had much opportunity to breed great poets. Our pioneer stock was mostly drawn from the venturesome and hardy, who were poets in deeds and not in words. For that reason much of our poetry has been of the strenuous kind, or from men who were nurtured in rough surroundings. Gordon, the horseman; Lawson, the swagman; Paterson, the horse lover; Ogilvie, the jackeroo -- these men wrote the poetry of the out-of-doors, which to the poetaster overseas with his centuries of civilization, is hard to understand.

Kendall was the first to apply finer instincts to a rough land in the making, and he found a quiet beauty where others had only seen adventure. For this reason he is very dear to us. Whoever may come after him will never depose him as our first great poet.

Consider the titles of his published collections: Poems and Songs, Leaves from Australian Forests, and Songs from the Mountains. How truly he was wrapped up in the hills and forests!

The poet of the great plains of the interior has still to arise, and we will find him yet just as we found the laureate of the mountains in Kendall.

First published in The Herald, 26 May 1934
Henry Kendall webpage
Henry Kendall photo

In what strikes me as a strange, but very welcome, occurrence, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature appears to have been made available on the web. From an Australian and New Zealand perspective, "Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two. Chapter XII" is the one to look for. There you will find introductions to the works of Charles Harpur, Henry Kendall, Adam Lindsay Gordon, James Brunton Stephens, Henry Kingsley and William Howitt; Marcus Clarke; "Rolf Boldrewood", and Historians.

Southern men of letters, seeking kinder fields across the waves,
Tell a shameful tale entitled "Deniehy's Forgotten Grave".
Ask the South of Charles Harpur! Seek the bitter truth, and tell
Of the life of Henry Kendall, in the land he loved so well!
Sing the songs he wrote in vain! Touch the South with bitter things;
Take the harp he touched so gently; show the blood upon the strings!

It was kind of Southern critics; it was very brave to mouth
At the volume of his boyhood, that was published in the South.
Kendall knew it all -- he knew it; and the tears were very near
When he spoke about the sorrows of "the man of letters here".
(And his wail of "O, My Brother!" came again to one who went
To his grave before "his brothers" mocked him with a monument.)

Banish envy, Southern writer! Strike with no uncertain hand,
For the sound of Gordon's rifle still is ringing through the land!
Ah! the niggard recognition! Ah! the "fame" that came in vain
To the poor dead poet lying with a bullet though his brain!
"Gone, my friends!" (he thought it better to be gone away from here),
Gone, my friends, with "last year's dead leaves ... at the falling of the year".

Pleasant land for one who proses, pleasant land for one who rhymes
With the terrible advantage of a knowledge of hard times:
To be patronised, "encouraged", praised for his contempt of "pelf",
To be told of greater writers who were paupers, like himself;
To be buried as a pauper; to be shoved beneath the sod --
While the brainless man of muscle has the burial of a god.

We have learned the rights of labour. Let the Southern writers start
Agitating, too, for letters and for music and for art,
Till Australian scenes on canvas shall repay the artist's hand,
And the songs of Southern poets shall be ringing thro' the land,
Till the galleries of Europe have a place for Southern scenes,
And our journals crawl no longer to the Northern magazines.

First published in The Bulletin, 28 May 1892
[The first part of this poem was published last week.]

While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part --
You're a clever southern writer, scarce inferior to Bret Harte.

If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks,
And discover shining rivers where there's only mud and sticks;
If you picture "mighty forests" where the mulga spoils the view --
You're superior to Kendall, and ahead of Gordon too.

If you swear there's not a country like the land that gave you birth,
And its sons are just the noblest and most glorious chaps on earth;
If in every girl a Venus your poetic eye discerns,
You are gracefully referred to as the "young Australian Burns".

But if you should find that bushmen -- spite of all the poets say --
Are just common brother-sinners, and you're quite as good as they --
You're a drunkard, and a liar, and a cynic, and a sneak,
Your grammar's simply awful and your intellect is weak.

First published in The Bulletin, 18 August 1894