An Anthology of Australian Poetry to 1920 Edited by John Kinsella TABLE of CONTENTS Nedlands, W.A. The University of Western Australia Library 2007 Acknowledgements Thanks to the English Department at Kenyon College, the Office of the Provost at Kenyon College, and the Kenyon College Library (Consort, OhioLink, Interlibrary Loan); to the Landscape and Language Centre at Edith Cowan University; to Toby Burrows at the Scholars' Centre, Reid Library, University of Western Australia; to the Battye Library, Western Australia; to the Flinder's Library, Sydney; special thanks to the SETIS website at Sydney University Library; to Nicholas Pounder, Sydney; to Serendipity Books, Perth; to Greg at Imprints Bookshop, Adelaide; to Mainly Books, Perth; and special thanks to Andy Grace, my hardworking, hard-typing research assistant and good friend at Kenyon College. I would also like to acknowledge the indigenous people of Australia as the custodial keepers of the land-mass known as “Australia”, and to indicate my respect for their cultures and traditions. This Anthology is published in electronic form by the University of Western Australia Library. Copyright in the selection and arrangement: John Kinsella. 2 Table of Contents Part One Erasmus Darwin Visit of Hope to Sydney-Cove, near Botany-Bay George Carter True Patriots All Henry Carter Prologue. By a Gentleman of Leicester John Grant Verses Written to Lewin, the Entomologist, 1805 Anonymous (either George Howe or Reverend Samuel Marsden) A Gardening Poem of 1809 Michael Massey Robinson Ode (For His Majesty’s Birth Day.) An Ode Ode (For The Queen’s Birthday, 1816.) Song (To Celebrate the Anniversary of the Establishment of the Colony) Barron Field Botany-Bay Flowers On Reading the Controversy Between Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles Sonnet on Affixing a Tablet to the Memory of Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks Against the Rock of Their First Landing in Botany Bay Sonnet on Visiting the Spot Where Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks First Landed in Botany Bay The Kangaroo 3 Richard Whately There is a Place in Distant Seas William Charles Wentworth Australasia Impromptu Anonymous To the Editor, Sydney Gazette “T.K.” Australia; or the Exile Mary Leman Grimstone On Visiting the Cemetery at Hobart Town John Dunmore Lang Colonial Nomenclature D’Entrecasteaux’ Channel,Van Dieman’s Land Sadoean Ballad No. 3 Sonnet Anonymous Botany Bay Flowers “Rusticus” Of All the Flowers That Sweetly Blow Charles Tompson An Elegy on Winter in Argyleshire Ode V. to Sylvia Retrospect; Or, A Review of my Scholastic Days 4 “L.” To The Swan Anonymous A New Song “Q.” A Hot Day in Sydney The Tothersider and the Perthite Anonymous Genuine Botany Bay Eclogues No. 1 Australian Courtship Anonymous Botany Bay, A New Song Anonymous Van Diemen’s Land Eliza Hamilton Dunlop The Aboriginal Mother The Aboriginal Father James Knox Transplanted Trees Charles M’Donald An Address Miss Sarah Collins Lament Francis MacNamara (‘Frank the Poet’) A Convict’s Tour to Hell 5 A petition from the chain gang at Newcastle to Captain Furlong the superintendent praying him to dismiss a scourger named Duffy from the cookhouse and appoint a man in his room. Farewell to Tasmania Labouring With the Hoe The Seizure of Cyprus Brig in Recherche Bay, Aug., 1829 Epigram of Introduction Anonymous Paddy Malone In Australia Robert Gray The Regatta Anonymous Jack Donahue and His Gang Anonymous Moreton Bay George J. Macdonald On a Movement of Beethoven’s Lines to a Steamboat Fidelia Hill Adelaide Recollections Anonymous Testimony to Gawler Henry Parkes Solitude A Beauteous Terrorist 6 PART TWO Charles Harpur A Basket of Summer Fruit A Flight of Wild Ducks A Mid-Summer Noon in the Australian Forest A Storm in the Mountains VIII. Collins VII. Gray CXXIX Poetry and Prose The Creek of the Four Graves The Drunkard Richard Howitt To The Daisy Tullamarine Anonymous Scraps from a Bushman’s Note Book G.F. Pickering The Bushman’s Grave ‘Auster’ The Tasmanian Aborigine’s Lament and Remonstrance When in Sight of His Native Land from Flinders Island Daniel Henry Deniehy To His Wife Amans Amare Caroline Leakey English Wild Flowers 7 The Prisoners’ Hospital, Van Diemen’s Land Charles R. Thatcher Dick Briggs from Australia The New-Chum Swell The Queer Ways of Australia Anonymous Me and My Dog Anonymous The Stringybark Cockatoo Andrew Wotherspoon Lines Anonymous Untitled Anonymous Brave Ben Hall Anonymous The Wild Colonial Boy Anonymous The Old Keg Of Rum Anonymous They’ve All Got a Mate but Me Caroline Carleton Fragmentary Lines Written in the Cemetery Lines On the Suicide of a Young Lady 8 Wild Flowers of Australia James Lionel Michael Memory Anonymous The Free Selector Henry Kendall A Death in the Bush Aboriginal Death-Song Bell Birds Charles Harpur Lilith On a Street The Last of His Tribe The Hut by the Black Swamp The Warrigal Adam Lindsay Gordon No Name The Sick Stockrider Valedictory Poem John Le Gay Brereton Kretschmann Open Speech Unborn Menie Parkes Our Darling’s Lover 9 Edgar George Williams Canberra in 1867 Bertha Boyd Daniel in the Lion’s Den Elizabeth Deborah Brockman On Receiving From England A Bunch of Dried Wild Flowers The Cedars To England Ministering Ralph Delaney Old Scotland J. Swain Carol of the Reapers John Boyle O’Reilly The Dukite Snake M.C. (Catherine Edith Macaulay Martin) My Love Gave Me “Silent Jim” “Whitefellow” On the Death of the Aboriginal Cricketer John Taylor PART THREE Elizabeth Julia McKeahnie In Memory of Mr. Kenneth Cameron J. Brenchley Odorous Melbourne 10 Henry E. Clay Blackboy Hill “Sylvanus” (William Forster) The Devil and the Governor Arthur Patchett Martin A Bush Study, A La Watteau A Romance in the Rough My Cousin from Pall Mall ‘Australie’ (Emily Manning) From the Clyde to Braidwood Anonymous The Old Bullock Dray Charles Frederic Chubb An Ode to Sir George Ferguson Bowen, Knight Alexander Russell An Australian Drought On the Port Elliot Rocks, S.A. Douglas B.W. Sladen To The Australian Eleven Under the Wattle Keighley Goodchild The Mechanic’s Song Francis Adams Post-Mortem 11 “Rolf Boldrewood” (T.A. Browne) The Bushman’s Lullaby Marcus Clarke An Australian Paean—1876 In a Lady’s Album Anonymous How Long, O Lord! Anonymous Lousy Harry Mrs. J. A. Bode Lubra Mary Hannay Foott Where the Pelican Builds In the Land of Dreams Happy Days In Time of Drought New Country John Hood The Death of the Native Chief Robert Lowe The Price of Freedom Song of the Squatters I Song of the Squatters II Anonymous Botany Bay 12 John Farrell Australia Ada Cambridge Contentment The Future Verdict Vows An Old Doll Craven-Heart Desire Drunk Fashion Individuality Influence Outcast The Mob Wasted Ethel Castilla An Australian Girl Alpha Crucis Trucanini’s Dirge Margaret Thomas Adam Lindsay Gordon Frank Penn-Smith A Deserted Clearing 13 Anonymous Who Cares for Nothing George Essex Evans The Women of the West From Loraine Toowoomba Sydney Jephcott In the Morning “Frederick” North Brisbane Advance Inez K. Hyland Disloyalty F.C.B. Vosper The New Woman Edward Dyson Struck It at Last Arthur Bayldon Crabs Night-Silence Barcroft Boake Where the Dead Men Lie Christopher Brennan [The point of noon is past, outside: light is asleep; . .] [There is a far-off thrill that troubles me: . .] [Was it the sun that broke my dream . .] 14 [She is the night: all horror is of her . .] [This is of Lilith, by her Hebrew name . .] [Thus in her hour of wrath, o'er Adam's head . .] 1908 [Come out, come out, ye souls that serve, why will ye die? . .] [Dawns of the world, how I have known you all, . .] [Each day I see the long ships coming into port . .] [How old is my heart, how old is my heart, . .] [I am driven everywhere from a clinging home, . .] [I cry to you as I pass your windows in the dusk; . .] [I sorrow for youth — ah, not for its wildness (would that were dead!) . .] [O desolate eves along the way, how oft, . .] [O tame heart, and why are you weary and cannot rest? . .] [Once I could sit by the fire hourlong when the dripping eaves . .] [The land I came thro' last was dumb with night, . .] [What is there with you and me, that I may not forget . .] [When window-lamps had dwindled, then I rose . .] [You, at whose table I have sat, some distant eve . .] [The yellow gas is fired from street to street . .] [The winter eve is clear and chill:] [Sweet silence after bells! . .] ‘Viator’ (Charles W. Andree Hayward) Along the Road to Cue 15 Victor J. Daley Dreams In a Wine Cellar St. Francis II Tamerlane The Woman at the Washtub Villanelle Anonymous The Twentieth Century Girl PART FOUR Henry Ffrench Gillman On Jezebel R. Holt Lachlan Jack W.T. Goodge The Great Australian Adjective “The Boulder Bard” (“Willy-Willy”) Ode to West Australia Anonymous One of the Has-beens Henry Lawson My Literary Friend The Captain Of The Push The Old Jimmy Woodser 16 “Thistle” M.C. Anderson (Mrs. Herbert Fisher) The War and Other Things A.B. Paterson Song of the Artesian Water Song Of The Wheat The Angel's Kiss Waltzing Matilda Alfred George Stephens The Hanging Judge Brunton Stephens On a Fork of Byron's Furnley Maurice (Frank Wilmot) Town Folk The Agricultural Show, Flemington, Victoria Bernard O’Dowd Australia Envy The Asetic Call Martin Benson Threshing Anonymous Bringing Home The Cows Anonymous Dwell Not With Me 17 Anonymous Sunny New South Wales Anonymous Two Aboriginal Songs Ernest Favenc Daybreak in the Desert In the Desert Louisa Lawson A Child's Question A Mother's Answer Lines The City Bird George Gordon McCrae The Silence of the Bush Life’s a Cigar Edwin Greenslade Murphy (“Dryblower”) The Smiths The Lodes That Under-lie The Rhymes That Our Hearts Can Read Frederic Manning Grotesque Leaves The Trenches William Baylebridge (William Blocksidge) “II” from Life’s Testament 18 “XXXII” from Love Redeemed Mary Fullerton (“E”) Crows Cubes Emus Flesh Lichen Lovers Modern Poets Process The Selector’s Wife Dorothea Mackellar A Smoke Song My Country Frederick William Ophel A Mining Analogy His Epitaph Charles Souter Harvest Time Anonymous McQuade’s Curse Francis Kenna In the Bush Zora Berenice May Cross Elegy on an Australian Schoolboy 19 Girl-Gladness Love Sonnets X.