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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 1

Kendall's Poems

page 3

Kendall's Poems.

Poems of Henry Kendall. G. Robertson & Co., Melbourne, Sydney, &c.

A reproach has been removed from Australian literature by the publication of the collected poems of Henry Clarence Kendall. A generation hence, his works will probably be far more widely known and esteemed than they are to-day. Rarely is a poet appreciated in his own day, and Kendall was no exception to the rule. By a limited circle he was recognized as the sweetest singer Australia has produced, and the best interpreter of her natural beauties; but to the great majority of his contemporaries the poet and his genius were alike matters of indifference. The tastes of Young Australia are not literary. The hero of the hour is the champion athlete or the successful jockey; and the literary man—however lofty his aim or high his abilities—meets with scant recognition. It is therefore the more gratifying to find, not only that the earlier volumes of Kendall's fugitive pieces are now out of print, but that an Australian publisher has felt justified in sending forth a more complete and beautiful collection of his works than it has hitherto been possible to obtain.

It is eighteen or nineteen years since we first met with Kendall's name, at the foot of an original poem in the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled « Bell Birds. » It would not be easy to find anything more characteristic of the poet at his best, than this exquisite lyric. In the intense love of nature, the subtle local coloring which pervades the whole, and in the perfect finish and ringing music of the rhythm, it will not suffer by comparison with the work of any modern poet.

There is much that is sad, not only in the poems before us, but in the brief records we have of Kendall's biography. The story of his life is one of stern and often ineffectual struggle with difficulties without and enemies within. Some of his most powerful lines were wrung from the depths of his own bitter experience. The world is ready enough to discern want of success, and slow to make due allowance. It was Kendall's hapless lot to strive against an inherited failing; and it is to his credit that he overcame in the end. The darkest periods of conflict were brightened by the devotion of his admirable wife.

The poet too lightly estimated the value of his own work. Like all men of true genius, he set before him an ideal so high, that his best work seemed to him little better than failure. One of the best estimates of the quality of his genius, is that of the late poet R. H. Horne, who had to adjudicate on some competition poems in the year 1868. The names of the writers were of course unknown to the critic. In awarding the prize, he wrote: « Arakoon' is evidently one who has made poetry and the poetic art the ruling passion of his life. Such poems as 'A Death in the Bush' are produced by no other means and by no other men; never have been, and never will be. I consider the three poems sent in by 'Arakoon' as worthy of comparison with some of the finest parts of Wordsworth's 'Excursion.' 'Arakoon' here and there displays the influence of one, indeed of two, modern poets: but he is no imitator, and copies directly and closely from nature by striking generalities, and without any petty and prolix details. »

The mere would-be poet will choose an imposing subject, and mar it. The true poet glorifies the simplest object with the light of his genius. « Moss on a Wall » in the heart of a city is one of Kendall's themes—homely enough; but the sight transports the poet to his favorite woods, and suggests some beautiful verses:

O friend of mine, to one whose eyes
Are vexed because of alien things,
For ever in the wall-moss lies
The peace of hills and hidden springs.

From faithless lips and fickle lights
The tired pilgrim sets his face,
And thinketh here of sounds and sights
In many a lovely forest place.
And when by sudden fits and starts
The sunset on the moss doth burn,
He often dreams, and lo! the marts
And streets are changed to dells of fern.

In the poem entitled « After Many Years, » in which he laments that the lofty song of his early dreams « remains unwritten yet, » some of the stanzas are very touching:

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.

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.

In his keen insight into the all-pervading soul in nature, Kendall occasionally reminds us of Shelley; but without the affectation of paganism which is found in the older poet's verse, and is fashionable with his imitators. However the storms of life may beat about his head, the man has his feet upon a rock who can feel and write like Kendall:

One thing is surer than the autumn tints
We saw last week in yonder river-bend—
That all our poor expression helps and hints,
However vaguely, to the solemn end.
That God is Truth; and if our dim ideal
Falls short of fact—so short that we must weep—
Why shape specific sorrows, though the real
Be not the song that erewhile made us sleep?
A man is manliest when he wisely knows
How vain it is to halt, and pule, and pine;
Whilst under every mystery haply flows
The finest issue of a love divine.

Mr P. J. Holdsworth, in a brief preface, gives a kindly and appreciative estimate of Kendall's life-work. It is perhaps as well that the collection is not absolutely complete—even the greatest poets suffer when all their temporary and imperfect work is religiously preserved from oblivion; but there are several poems we are sorry to miss. « The Warrigal » is characteristic and thoroughly Australian, but we do not find it in the volume before us. The poet's tribute to Charles Harpur is in the collection; but other memorial lines to his fellow poets are strangely enough absent. The closing lines of one of these are very beautiful:

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 I to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name
I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true
page 4 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 mists
The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,
And strained in vain to hear the going voice.

We do not wonder that the poems « In Hyde Park » and « Australia Vindex » are not reprinted. While they faithfully enough embodied the feeling of execration with which the would-be assassin O'Farrell was regarded at the time his deed was committed, they were not such as the kindly nature of the poet would have approved when the occasion had passed. But the fine inaugural ode at the opening of the Sydney Exhibition might have found a place, as also the little song « Sitting by the Fire, » and the somewhat Swinburnian lyric « The Leaves on the Lattices Falling. » Still, the published collection is so full of beautiful and graceful verse, that it should find a place in the library of every lover of good poetry. The humorous and the classical poems are of high merit; but the poet is at his best as the interpreter of nature as revealed in Australia. With the spirits of the woods and brooks he is at home, and they speak to him a language unknown to common ears. When we reflect that the great modern poets have given us their finest and mellowest work after three-score and ten, we can partly realize what we have lost in Kendall, some of whose best pieces were written when he was five-and-twenty, and who was cut off at the comparatively early age of forty-one.

One of the most useful Parliamentary Papers yet published has just been issued from the Government printing office: An Index to the Appendices to the journals of the Legislative Council and House of Representatives of New Zealand from 1854 to 1885 inclusive. The preparation of the paper cost £75, and the printing £58 14/-; but it is better worth the expense than the majority of state documents. It is a complete guide to the vast labyrinth of official publications for thirty-two years. It occupies 116 foolscap pages, and contains nearly twelve thousand entries.

Why (an American contemporary asks) are brewers stout, and journalists thin? Because, he replies, the brewer appeals to the stomach and the literary man to the brains—and in case of a contest between these vital organs, the former can always poll a big majority.

The above axiom has just had a comical illustration in Auckland, in the case of Mr Hancock, who owns shares in a brewery and in a newspaper. The paper published an article which the Working Men's Club, in meeting assembled, considered derogatory to their order; and it was proposed to « boycot » Mr Hancock and all his works. To stop the paper was easy enough; but to boycot the Beer —— They seemed to think they had been a little too hasty. The resolution was « left open for consideration »!

One of the brightest of our trade contemporaries is the American Paper World, which has just completed its thirteenth volume. Primarily concerned with the papermaking industry, it is also filled with matter of general interest to the printing fraternity. It is printed on a beautiful quality of paper, its presswork is faultless, and its literary matter is entirely free from the vulgarity which pervades so many of the American trade organs. For years past we have carefully preserved and bound the numbers, and we find them of abiding interest.

There are one or more journalists (?) in the north whose special line appears to be to float foolish hoaxes. This is the latest:— An expedition is to be sent to the polar regions to detach ice masses of about 600 cubic miles each. These are to be cut off by a heated wire, and floated into warmer seas, to modify the Australian climate! Several papers have already copied the item in all good faith. Our legislature has provided special penalties for the idiots who concoct fictitious announcements of births and marriages. There appears to be no means of reaching the other offenders.