“In the whole range of English literature,” says an Australian critic
reviewing the complete edition of Gordon’s poems, “in the whole range
of English literature there have been few poets possessed of a finer
lyrical faculty than Adam Lindsay Gordon.... ‘Ashtaroth,’” continues our
critic now warm at his work, “‘Ashtaroth’ is worthy to rank with any of
Tennyson’s songs, and is far more musical than the best of Browning’s.”
Then there is “the beauty of his ballad poetry, such as ‘Fauconshawe’ and
‘Rippling Water,’ which are perfect of their style;” and so on in the
same strain, more or less, until the reader is surprised that our critic
ends up with no further claim for his poet than that he “deserves to be
ranked with the genuine poets of his generation.” One does not propose
to criticise, verbally, criticism of this sort: it would be unkind to do
so, and, above all, it would be useless. This is a native melody in the
style of “Rule Britannia:” “Australia, and especially Victoria, is great
and therefore her poet must be great also. Let us say that Melbourne is
the equal of any English city save London, and Gordon the equal of any
English poet save Shakspere and Milton!”
Now let us hear what another Australian critic, one who cares more about
finding out the real deep true significance of Gordon and his poetry
than of glorifying the _amour-propre_ of this class or of that: let
us hear what Mr. Marcus Clarke has to say. “Written as they were” (as
Gordon’s poems were) “at odd times in leisure moments of a stirring
and adventurous life, it is not to be wondered at if they are unequal
and unfinished. The astonishment of those who knew the man, and can
gauge the capacity of this city to foster poetic instinct, is, that
such work was ever produced here at all.”—What a different tone is
this from that of our first and enthusiastic critic! “_Unequal and
unfinished_”—“_astonishment that such work was ever produced here at
all!_” But this is not all that Mr. Clarke has to say about Gordon’s
poetry: he has also to notice what influence was at work in it, and
(most important of all!) what is its real deep true significance. He
talks of Gordon “owning nothing but a love for horsemanship and a head
full of Browning and Shelley,” and follows this up by saying that
“the influence of Browning and of Swinburne” (who, as we all know,
has been, creatively and demonstratively, the chief prophet in his
generation of the poet who, he likes to think, is ‘beloved above all
other poets, being beyond all other poets—in one word, and the only
proper word,—divine’)—“the influence of Browning and of Swinburne upon
the writer’s taste is plain. There is plainly visible also, however, a
keen sense of natural beauty and a manly admiration for healthy living.”
Well, and the conclusion of the whole matter? “The student of these
unpretending volumes will be repaid for his labour. _He will find in them
something very like the beginnings of a national school of Australian
poetry._”
Let us hasten to offer up our small tribute of praise and thanks to Mr.
Clarke for his critical sagacity here, and let us venture to hope that
the “Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon” may go down to posterity accompanied
always by this small “Preface” of Mr. Clarke, who both “knew the man” and
was yet the first to appreciate this aspect of his work.
What, however, Mr. Clarke has to say about the facts of Gordon’s life
is, at best, inaccurate. It is Mr. Sutherland to whom our gratitude is
due here, gratitude for having discovered for us all the details of the
poet’s life which it is necessary for us to know.[2]
What, then, remains for any other critic to do? There remains to him,
as it seems to me, the task of doing what Mr. Clarke tells us he did
not propose to do, “of criticising these volumes,” and also of trying,
as befits one who comes later, and to whom, therefore, the events of
the past have fallen into that symmetry and proper proportion that the
events of the present can scarcely ever fall into: of trying, I say, to
bring out more clearly (one aspect of which he has done little more than
indicate), the real, deep, true significance of the poet’s work; in a
word, of trying to understand, instead of being “astonished” at it.
The first thing to notice about Gordon’s poetry is, that it is almost
all in regular and rymed rhythms. There is not a line of blank verse in
it. Now, a “fine faculty” for regular and rymed rhythms is by no means
a synonym for a “fine lyrical faculty.” Shelley, our greatest master
in poetry of pure melody, has a “fine faculty” for regular and rymed
rhythms, but has also a fine faculty for irregular rhythms: lines in
which the regular rhythm is broken, in order that a more subtle melody
may be expressed, are frequent in him. In Mr. Swinburne such lines are
rare—he has a fine faculty for regular and rymed rhythms, but his faculty
for irregular rhythms is (let us say) less fine. Gordon, who is the
disciple of this first side of Mr. Swinburne’s technical talent, who, in
his turn, is a disciple of the first side of Shelley’s—Gordon, I say, is
in this respect to Mr. Swinburne what Mr. Swinburne is to Shelley.
Mr. Hammersley, one of the few survivors of that peculiar phase of
colonial and Victorian feeling which produced the poetry of Gordon, and
who “may say he knew him intimately” —tells us[3] how he “was often
amused to hear him quote from the poets, and his recitations used to make
me laugh outright. One day I said, ‘Hang it, Gordon, you can write good
poetry, but you can’t read.’” What was the matter with his “reading,”
then? He used to “read” in “a sing-song fashion.” Mr. Woods, too, tells
us[4] that “Gordon had an odd way of reciting poetry, and his delivery
was monotonous; but,” he adds, “his way of emphasising the beautiful
portions of what he recited was charming from its earnestness.” Gordon’s
criticism on his own verses was: “They don’t _ring_ so badly after all,
old fellow, do they?” He had no faculty for irregular rhythms. He cannot,
then, be said to possess a “fine lyrical faculty;” he possessed a fine
faculty for regular and rymed rhythms. (As for his rymes, as rymes, they
are as a rule excellent, although there is often too little of the “poet
or prophet,” as he says, in them, and too much of the “jingler of rymes,”
the dealer in “verse-jingle chimes.”) Since, however, this faculty of
his is a fine faculty, it must not be described as (in the usual and
bad sense of the word) imitative. There are, I think, passages in him
that Byron might have written (“To my Sister”), that Lord Tennyson might
have written (“The Road to Avernus,” scene x.), that Mr. Swinburne might
have written (“A Dedication”), and the latter are frequent. In no other
poets, save Wordsworth and the earlier works of Mr. Arnold, do I find
precisely this same sort of (shall I say) parallelism of feeling and
expression on certain subjects that I do in Mr. Swinburne and Gordon. But
it is, I think, very open to question whether Gordon would have grown,
as Mr. Arnold has, into a purely distinctive style of his own. Gordon
is terribly lacking in variety: to live with a close study of him for
several days is one of the most trying of critical tasks. “My rymes,” he
asks—
“My rymes, are they stale? If my metre
is varied, one chime rings through all;
one chime—though I sing more or sing less,
I have but one string to my lute.”
I doubt, I say, whether under any circumstances Gordon would have
produced, as Mr. Hammersley thought, “poems worthy to be ranked with some
of the masterpieces of the English language.” He had not patience enough,
he had not clear-sightedness enough! “A more dare-devil rider,” says Mr.
Hammersley, “never crossed a horse.... As a steeplechase rider he was, of
course, in the very first rank, and his name is indelibly associated with
many of the most famous chases run in Victoria, although in my opinion,
and I think in that of many good judges too, he was deficient in what
is termed ‘good hands,’ and when it came to a finish was far behind a
Mount or a Watson.” (And, considering his shortsightedness, which Mr.
Woods designates as “painful,” this is not to be wondered at). It is the
same with his poetry. All in his poetry that is good has been done at
a rush; the rest is inferior, poor, and sometimes quite worthless. He
has little, if any, sense of real artistic workmanship either in whole
or in parts: “he is deficient in what is termed ‘good hands.’” Take,
for instance, his dramatic lyric, “Ashtaroth.” It is worth reading.
There are two beautiful songs in it, “On the Current,” and “Oh! days
and years departed.” There are a few fine passages, a few fine dramatic
touches, in it, and one splendid outburst of Orion’s (“I hate thee not,
thy grievous plight”), but the poem, taken as a whole is, I say, worth
reading. Many of the speeches are weak, and some are not poetry at all,
but rymed prose, and bad at that. A sustained effort, such as a piece
like this requires, was impossible to him. I say nothing of the ludicrous
attempt at an adaptation of Faust, Mephistopheles and Margarete, which
is the basis of the poem: I merely remark that, judged by its own poor
standard of judgment, it is quite a failure. Perhaps some day we shall
have a selection from the poet’s work, from which what is worthless will
be eliminated, in order that all our attention may be fixed on what is
good, and perhaps the selector will have the courage to dismiss all this
poem, save some dozen or so of extracts, into the gulf of oblivion or
an appendix. Encumbered as Gordon at present is with such an amount of
worthless work, there is a danger that much of what is good may perish
also.
All his poetry that is good, I say, has been done at a rush. The dramatic
touches in it are as frequent as they are fine. Take, for instance, this
from the “Rhyme of Joyous Guard.”—Lancelot, old, worn-out, feeling that
“there is nothing good for him under the sun but to perish as” (his
bright past) “has perished,” is thinking of the close of his career
and Arthur’s: of the discovery of his amour with Guinevere, his siege
in Joyous Guard, his encounters with “brave Gawain,” whom he virtually
slew, and then “the crime of Modred,” and “the king by the knave’s hand
stricken”—
“And the once-loved knight, was he there to save
that knightly king who that knighthood gave?
_Ah, Christ! will he greet me as knight or knave_
_in the day when the dust shall quicken?_”
This is splendid! And, as I have said, it by no means stands alone. As
a set-off against this excellence of his, is the defect of prolixity.
Byron had it, but Byron was an unsurpassed improviser, not an artist.
Like, too, his technical master of the “Poems and Ballads” when he gets
hold of a regular or rymed rhythm that pleases him, Gordon will go on
making it “ring,” listening as the “verse-jingle chimes,” till we are all
quite weary of it. He is regardless of what Goethe calls “the æsthetic
whole.” Indeed, it may justly be said that few, very few, of his poems
are “æsthetic wholes” at all, but only passages.
So much, then, for the outward form of his poetry. We have now to
consider what is the significance to us of his life and work, of his
personality, and of his “criticism of life.”
In the first place, let us begin by stating that Gordon _has_ a
personality. Mr. Hammersley tells us how “at times Gordon was the
strangest, most weird, mysterious man I ever saw, and I could not help
feeling almost afraid of him, and yet there was a fascination about him
that made me like to see him.” There was the fascination of his converse.
“He was one of the few men I have known in the colonies,” asseverates
Mr. Hammersley, “that never made me tire of listening to him.” And there
was the fascination of his individuality: “His wild haunting eye,” “a
look something like what is termed the evil eye.” (This reminds one
of what Mr. Clarke has to say about “the dominant note of Australian
scenery: Weird Melancholy.”) Mr. Woods’ whole article bears witness
to this personal fascination of Gordon’s. Well, it is the same in his
poetry: I mean, that it is the same as Mr. Hammersley _means_. There is
attraction in Gordon. We want to go to see anything that he has had to do
with. We seek out his grave and brood over it.[5] He is the Australian
fellow to Baudelaire and James Thomson, the last martyrs, let us hope,
to our terrible period of transition from the Old World into the New,
from Mediævalism into Modernity. There is attraction in Gordon. We should
like to have seen and known the original of Laurence Raby, of Maurice,
of the man of the “Sea-spray and Smoke-Drift,” and “Bush Ballads and
Galloping Rhymes.” He is an individuality, and a modern and a colonial
individuality. He looks at life as it is, not as it is represented.
“In thy grandeur, oh sea! we acknowledge,
in thy fairness, oh earth! we confess,
hidden truths that are taught in no college,
hidden songs that no parchment express.”