"Francis Adams is about the least Australian of the Australian poets.
There is in his work lack of wattle-bloom and waratah, rollicking
rhyme and galloping jingle. There is much of old-world problems and
old-world troubles, which are old-world simply because we here have
not had time enough to breed the fever germ to a ravaging pestilence.
We have, however, the fever germ, and Francis Adams does our young
country yeoman service in awakening a fear for the future in his
latest book of poems, 'Songs of the Army of the Night.' The book is
not all night though. It is a cantata without music. The first part
is all gloom; angry threatening clouds bar out the light of the coming
dawn; footsteps of the weary and fallen plash along in the mud and
darkness; the lightning of angry steel, gleaming phosphorescent in the
night; the hoarse hum of famished millions moiling along with a dim
yearning for a bloody vengeance, contribute the details of a grim
picture of realistic misery. The first part deserves the title given
to the whole book, 'Songs of the Army of the Night.' The third part
is perturbed and stormy, the sea heaving and surging after a tempest;
but already the day is breaking, and young hope is felt in the warmth
of the sun's first rays. The third part might be justly termed 'Songs
of the Dawn.' The second part is hot and heavy with the languorous
heat of the tropics. . . . The whole book is a hymn in praise of
fodder. The people march hungry, hoarse with lack of sustenance,
gripping their firelocks with feverish, skeleton hands, glaring
fiercely with famished eyes towards the granaries of the wealthy. . .
. This is the sermon of Nature: 'If you would be good, eat.' It is
in the first part that we hear the trumpet-blast of the social
message. Here the verses throb with a realistic agony, a lyric
Zolaism, that chains the eyes to the page with a virile fascination.
It is so simple, too--the coarse, strong meat of the poetry of first
principles. The lines are hot and fervid; the poet's pulses keep time
with the great heart of human woe. This is socialism in verse,
anarchism in the guise of a Grecian statue. 'Outside London' breathes
thick and heavy with the vapours of gutterdom. It is despair, hunger,
prophecy, hate, revenge. Francis Adams, a ripe and true scholar, in
this shows his devotion to truth and to art. The traditions of
classicism are in this volume thrown to the winds. The poet's muse is
a glorified street trull, a Cassandra of the slums, a draggle-tailed
Menad from Whitechapel, and her voice is thick and frenzied with
shouting at the barricades. 'The Evening Hymn in the Hovels,'
'Hagar,' 'To the Girls of the Unions,' 'In the Edgware Road,' 'In
Trafalgar Square,' 'Aux Ternes,' 'One among so many,' 'The New
Locksley Hall,' 'To the Christians,' voice in passionate, simple
people's lyrics the socialism which is always felt in strong
under-currents by a nation before it appears in literary form, but
which is only on the eve of bursting forth and overwhelming everything
with its fury, when it does appear in literary form. Rosseau,
Voltaire, and Diderot ushered in the French Revolution; in similar
fashion the English Revolution is heralded by William Morris and
Francis Adams."--F. J. BROOMFIELD, Sydney _Bulletin_.
"DAWNWARDS?"
_To the Author of the_ "_Songs of the Army of the Night_."
We--who, encircled in sleepless sadness
With ears laid close to the Austral earth,
Have heard far cries of wrong-wrought madness,
Of hopeless anguish and murd'rous mirth
Beneath all noise of maudlin gladness
Awail, environ the world's wide girth--
Almost arise with Hope's keen urging
When out the vasty and night-bound North
Red rays ascend, and Songs resurging
Through all the darkness and chill, come forth!
The comet climbs until it scorches
The sacred dais that skies the great,
Until it gleams on palace porches,
Where blissful aeons-to-be hold state--
Fades, and we know it one of the torches
Madmen a moment elevate!
And, closer clutching the earth, our sorrow
Doth then with desperate murmur cry,
"We ne'er shall see or morn or morrow!
For never star doth scale the sky,
"All men made wise through midnight sable
To lead where, safe after all annoy,
Sleep soft in earth's Augean stable
The virgin "_Justice_," the infant "_Joy_!"--
Grant this, O Father, being able,
Or else in merciful might destroy
"This orb whose past and present, awful
Alike, attest it a torture wheel,
Where, bound by holy men and lawful,
Man's body's broken with bars of steel!"
But when we pause, despairing wholly,
As a storm that strengthens out on the sea,
The far-flown SONGS come sounding slowly!
As sea-birds kindle that sweep alee
New hopes, old yearnings winging slowly
From breast to bosom for shelter flee!
And scarce we know, as there they hover
And our blood beats 'neath their beating wings,
If 'tis an old dream earthed over
Or new bird-ballad that stirs and sings!
But truth's Tyrtaeus is now our neighbour,
And strives to waken the slumbering South
With peal and throb of trump and tabour
And sobbing songs of his mournful mouth
To see where Life's all-giver, Labour,
Lies fettered, famished and dumb with drouth.
SYDNEY JEPHCOTT,
Brisbane _Boomerang_, 25th January 1888.