The Poems of Henry Kendall

The Poems of Henry Kendall by Henry Kendall Contents Biographical Note POEMS AND SONGS FROM THE SONGS MOUNTAINS Mountains To a Mountain Kiama Mary Rivers Etheline Kingsborough Aileen Beyond Kerguelen Kooroora Black Lizzie Fainting by the Way Hy-Brasil Song of the Cattle- Jim the Splitter Hunters Mooni Footfalls Pytheas God Help Our Men at Sea Bill the Bullock-Driver Sitting by the Fire Cooranbean Bellambi's Maid When Underneath the Brown Dead Grass The Curlew Song The Voice in the Wild The Ballad of Tanna Oak The Rain Comes Billy Vickers Sobbing to the Door Persia Urara Lilith Evening Hymn Bob Stanzas Peter the Piccaninny The Wail in the Native Oak Narrara Creek Harps We Love In Memory of John Fairfax Waiting and Wishing Araluen The Wild Kangaroo The Sydney Clari International Exhibition Wollongong Christmas Creek Ella with the Shining Orara Hair The Curse of Mother The Barcoo Flood Bells Beyond the On a Spanish Cathedral Forest Rover Ulmarra The Melbourne The Maid of International Exhibition Gerringong By the Cliffs of the Sea Watching Galatea The Opossum- Hunters Black Kate In the Depths of a A Hyde Park Larrikin Forest Names Upon a Stone To Charles Harpur Leichhardt The River and the Hill After Many Years The Fate of the Explorers EARLY POEMS, Lurline 1859-70 Under the Figtree The Merchant Ship Drowned at Sea Oh, Tell Me, Ye Breezes Morning in the Bush The Far Future The Girl I Left Silent Tears Behind Me Extempore Lines Amongst the Roses The Old Year Sunset Tanna Doubting The Earth Laments for Geraldine Day Achan The Late W. V. Wild, Esq. Astarte LEAVES FROM AUSTRALIAN Australian War Song FORESTS The Ivy on the Wall Dedication The Australian Emigrant Prefatory Sonnets To My Brother, Basil E. The Hut by the Black Kendall Swamp The Waterfall September in The Song of Arda Australia The Helmsman Ghost Glen To Miss Annie Hopkins Daphne The Warrigal Foreshadowings Euroclydon Sonnets on the Discovery of Botany Bay Araluen by Captain Cook At Euroma To Henry Halloran Illa Creek Lost in the Flood Moss on a Wall Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Four Campaspe To—— On a Cattle Track At Long Bay To Damascus For Ever Bell-Birds Sonnets A Death in the Bush The Bereaved One A Spanish Love Song Dungog The Last of His Tribe Deniehy's Lament Arakoon Deniehy's Dream The Voyage of Telegonus Cui Bono? Sitting by the Fire In Hyde Park Cleone Australia Vindex Charles Harpur Ned the Larrikin Coogee In Memoriam—Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse Ogyges Rizpah By the Sea Kiama Revisited King Saul at Gilboa Passing Away In the Valley James Lionel Michael Twelve Sonnets— Elijah Sutherland's Grave Manasseh Syrinx Caroline Chisholm On the Paroo Mount Erebus Faith in God Our Jack Mountain Moss Camped by the Creek The Glen of Arrawatta Euterpe Euterpe Sedan Ellen Ray At Dusk OTHER POEMS, Safi 1871-82 Daniel Henry Adam Lindsay Gordon Deniehy In Memory of Edward Merope Butler After the Hunt How the Melbourne Cup was Won Rose Lorraine Blue Mountain Pioneers Robert Parkes At Her Window William Bede Dalley To the Spirit of Music John Dunmore Lang On a Baby Buried by the Hawkesbury Song of the Shingle- Splitters On a Street Heath from the Highlands The Austral Months Aboriginal Death-Song Sydney Harbour A Birthday Trifle Frank Denz Sydney Exhibition Cantata Hymn of Praise Basil Moss Hunted Down Wamberal In Memoriam—Alice Fane Gunn Stenhouse From the Forests John Bede Polding Outre Mer Biographical Note Henry Kendall was the first Australian poet to draw his inspiration from the life, scenery and traditions of the country. In the beginnings of Australian poetry the names of two other men stand with his—Adam Lindsay Gordon, of English parentage and education, and Charles Harpur, born in Australia a generation earlier than Kendall. Harpur's work, though lacking vitality, shows fitful gleams of poetic fire suggestive of greater achievement had the circumstances of his life been more favourable. Kendall, whose lot was scarcely more fortunate, is a true singer; his songs remain, and are likely long to remain, attractive to poetry lovers. The poet's grandfather, Thomas Kendall, a Lincolnshire schoolmaster, met the Revd. Samuel Marsden when the latter was in England seeking assistants for his projected missionary work in New Zealand. Kendall offered his services to the Church Missionary Society of London and came out to Sydney in 1809. Five years later he was sent to the Bay of Islands as a lay missionary, holding also the first magistrate's commission issued for New Zealand. He soon made friends with the Maoris and learnt their language well enough to compile a primer in pidgin- Maori, 'A Korao no New Zealand; or, the New Zealander's First Book', which George Howe printed for Marsden at Sydney in 1815. In 1820 Thomas Kendall went to England with some Maori chiefs, and while there helped Professor Lee, of Cambridge, to "fix" the Maori language—the outcome of their work being Lee and Kendall's 'Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand', published in the same year. Returning to New Zealand, Kendall, in 1823, left the Missionary Society and went with his son Basil to Chile. In 1826 he came back to Australia, and for his good work as a missionary received from the New South Wales Government a grant of 1280 acres at Ulladulla, on the South Coast. There he entered the timber trade and became owner and master of a small vessel used in the business. About 1832 this vessel was wrecked near Sydney, and all on board, including the owner, were drowned. Of Basil Kendall's early career little is known. While in South America he saw service under Lord Cochrane, the famous tenth Earl of Dundonald, who, after five brilliant years in the Chilean service, was, between 1823 and 1825, fighting on behalf of Brazil. Basil returned to Australia, but disappears from view until 1840. One day in that year he met a Miss Melinda McNally, and next day they were married. Soon afterwards they settled on the Ulladulla grant, farming land at Kirmington, two miles from the little town of Milton. There, in a primitive cottage Basil had built, twin sons—Basil Edward and Henry—were born on the 18th April, 1841. Five years later the family moved to the Clarence River district and settled near the Orara. Basil Kendall had practically lost one lung before his marriage, and failing health made it exceedingly difficult for him to support his family, to which by this time three daughters had been added. On the Orara he grew steadily weaker, and died somewhere about 1851. Basil Kendall was well educated, and had done what he could to educate his children. After his death the family was scattered, and the two boys were sent to a relative on the South Coast. The scenery of this district made a profound impression upon Henry, and is often referred to in his early poems. In 1855 his uncle Joseph took him as cabin boy in his brig, the 'Plumstead', for a two years' cruise in the Pacific, during which they touched at many of the Islands and voyaged as far north as Yokohama. The beauty of the scenes he visited lived in the boy's memory, but the rigours of ship life were so severe that in after years he looked back on the voyage with horror. Henry Kendall returned to Sydney in March, 1857, and at once obtained employment in the city and set about making a home for his mother and sisters. Mrs. Kendall, granddaughter of Leonard McNally, a Dublin notable of his day, was a clever, handsome woman with a strong constitution and a volatile temperament. Henry was always devoted to her, and considered that from her he inherited whatever talent he possessed. She helped in his education, and encouraged him to write verse. The first verses of his known to have been printed were "O tell me, ye breezes"—signed "H. Kendall"— which appeared in 'The Australian Home Companion and Band of Hope Journal' in 1859. A number of other poems by Kendall appeared in the same magazine during 1860 and 1861. But in a letter written years afterwards to Mr. Sheridan Moore, Kendall says "My first essay in writing was sent to 'The Southern Cross' at the time you were sub-editor. You, of course, lit your pipe with it. It was on the subject of the 'Dunbar'. After a few more attempts in prose and verse—attempts only remarkable for their being clever imitations—I hit upon the right vein and wrote the Curlew Song. Then followed the crude, but sometimes happy verses which made up my first volume." The verses on the wreck of the 'Dunbar', written at the age of sixteen, were eventually printed in 'The Empire' in 1860 as "The Merchant Ship". Henry Parkes, the editor of that newspaper, had already welcomed some of the boy's poems, and in 'The Empire' of the 8th December, 1859, had noticed as just published a song—"Silent Tears"—the words of which were written by "a young native poet, Mr. H. Kendall, N.A.P." These initials, which puzzled Parkes, as well they might, meant no more than Native Australian Poet. Kendall also sent some poems to 'The Sydney Morning Herald'; there they attracted the attention of Henry Halloran, a civil servant and a voluminous amateur writer, who sought out the poet and tried to help him. Kendall's mother brought him to Mr. Sheridan Moore, who had some reputation as a literary critic.

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