By A. B. Paterson.
THE LITERARY YEAR BOOK: “The immediate success of this
book of bush ballads is without parallel in Colonial literary annals,
nor can any living English or American poet boast so wide a public,
always excepting Mr. Rudyard Kipling.”
SPECTATOR: “These lines have the true lyrical cry in them.
Eloquent and ardent verses.”
ATHENAEUM: “Swinging, rattling ballads of ready humour, ready pathos,
and crowding adventure. ... Stirring and entertaining ballads
about great rides, in which the lines gallop like the very hoofs
of the horses.”
THE TIMES: “At his best he compares not unfavourably with the author
of 'Barrack-Room Ballads'.”
Mr. A. Patchett Martin, in LITERATURE (London): “In my opinion,
it is the absolutely un-English, thoroughly Australian style and character
of these new bush bards which has given them such immediate popularity,
such wide vogue, among all classes of the rising native generation.”
WESTMINSTER GAZETTE: “Australia has produced in Mr. A. B. Paterson
a national poet whose bush ballads are as distinctly characteristic
of the country as Burns's poetry is characteristic of Scotland.”
THE SCOTSMAN: “A book like this... is worth a dozen of the aspiring,
idealistic sort, since it has a deal of rough laughter
and a dash of real tears in its composition.”
GLASGOW HERALD: “These ballads... are full of such go
that the mere reading of them make the blood tingle....
But there are other things in Mr. Paterson's book besides
mere racing and chasing, and each piece bears the mark
of special local knowledge, feeling, and colour.
The poet has also a note of pathos, which is always wholesome.”
LITERARY WORLD: “He gallops along with a by no means doubtful music,
shouting his vigorous songs as he rides in pursuit of wild bush horses,
constraining us to listen and applaud by dint of his manly tones
and capital subjects... We turn to Mr. Paterson's roaring muse
with instantaneous gratitude.”