Part 7

No preparations, no apologies, no preliminary turning and scraping; only the rush of a few lines which sweep the reader, whether he likes it or not, into the enchanted world of dreams. Equally natural, and quite as resistless, is the sentiment of _Podas Okus_. Here again we feel, so to speak, the pulse-beat of the inevitable; we get again the impression that Gordon could not help the writing; that he himself, and not the Greek, is lying at a tent’s entrance; that for him the hues of sunset are blending with the brief glories of an almost vanished life; that it is he, and not Achilles, who murmurs to the golden-haired Briseis:--

Place your hand in mine, and listen, While the strong soul cleaves its way Through the death mist hovering o’er me, As the strong ship cleaves the wave, To my fathers gone before me, To the gods who love the brave.

The musical quality of Gordon is a kindred though a distinct merit. A poet may be natural and spontaneous without being particularly musical, just as he may achieve a musical result by what are manifestly artificial means. A lyric poet must, however, aim at musical effect. If he fails to attain this, he is not what he professes to be. Does the reader receive an impression of melody? Does it please him? Does he carry it away with him? These are some of the questions by which the writer of verses must always be judged. The novelty, or even the abstract merit of the idea does not matter so much. Occasionally, as in Swinburne’s _Triumph of Time_, there are to be found some striking ideas wedded to lines that are musically splendid. Occasionally, as in the same author’s _Ballad of Dreamland_, there is delicate and subtle harmony, associated only with the faint flicker of an idea. The school of self-styled poets founded by _Euphues_ made the cardinal mistake of supposing that the form of expression mattered little; that their chief business was to get hold of fresh fancies, and previously unheard-of conceits. We know better than that nowadays. We can put up with the old idea if the treatment is artistic enough and musical enough. In lyric poetry the new or the startling idea creates a kind of metaphysical check, and is not really wanted. In Gordon there is enough of the familiar, enough of the sentimental idea to satisfy every-day requirements, while there is musical quality enough to proclaim the genuine lyric poet. The man had a sensitive ear. It is rarely that he strikes discordant notes. His versification is not flawless; it is not always of the quality of _The Swimmer_ or of the _Autumn Song_, but in reading him one feels that Australia has produced a poet in whom there dwelt the rare faculty of music, the genuine gift of melodic form.

The third distinguishing attribute of Gordon is his refinement. This is a word that has come to require explanation. It has some rather unfortunate associations. A young ladies’ academy is nothing if not refined. Bunthorne, in _Patience_ is extremely refined. The heroes of Richardson and of Miss Burney are refinement itself. When the term is applied to a man or an author in these days, it is necessary to be explicit in order to avoid misunderstanding. One of the merits of Gordon, and one that must tend to make the memory of the man loved, even more than his poetry is admired, is the habit of thought which reflects a fine and clear and elevated temperament; a temperament, that does not lend itself to vice; a temperament, in other words, that is refined. To say that Gordon was so constituted is not to say that he lacked emotional strength or force. He had abundance of either. He had also passion, though it was a passion that ran to self-restraint, to fatalism, and to sombre thought. It never brought him to realism, or even to the verge of it. When he follows a certain impulse and writes:--

From a long way off to look at your charms Made my blood run redder in every vein, While he--he has held you long in his arms, And kissed you over and over again--

he is going as far as his finer nature will let him go in the painting of pictures dear to the fleshly school. It is almost incredible that a lyric poet who had come under the influence of Shelley and Swinburne should go no further than this. But Gordon’s verses are not like most other love verses--they show no indulgence in that more blatant form of sensualism which will insist on its red lips and its soft arms, on its tropic midnights and its reiterated embraces. It is only “from a long way off” that he looks upon the vision splendid; he never vulgarises it by coming too near it; in the better and more enduring sense of the word, he is refined.

To understand Gordon it is necessary to remember that his was a dual personality. First of all he was a man of action. He wrote as a man who loved action, for other men who loved action. There was enough of the soldier about him, enough of ingrained modesty, or of patrician reserve, to make him rather ashamed of a parade of his own feelings. It was very much finer, to his way of thinking, to _do_ something than merely to write about something. He lived much on horseback and rode in many races, because the speed of a steeplechase could persuade him for a moment that he was acting; could make him forget the piping times in which he lived. But while all his sympathy and all his desires were towards action, his temperament was largely that of the dreamer. It is a rare combination, and one that explains a great deal. When he put his dreams into words--when he set his fancy free in such compositions as _Doubtful Dreams_, _Cui Bono_, _A Song of Autumn_, and others of the kind, it did not occur to him that he was doing anything remarkable. It did not seem to him that fame was to be won in that way. It did not appeal to him that this class of work might call forth rarer qualities, might establish a better claim to gratitude and remembrance, than could the actions of the man who went with a tomahawk into the wilderness, or of the man who led a forlorn hope right up to the cannon’s mouth. He wrote not so much to please others as to please himself, and because he was unable to be always silent. He wrote because voices that sang through him would not remain dumb.

There are three classes into which his poetry can be divided. The first and the largest class is that in which the man of action preponderates. These are the verses that tell of deeds of daring, most of them accomplished on horseback. The lines have about them the genuine ring of saddle and sabre. The air seems to be rushing past as one reads them. Almost the whole of what praise or credit came to Gordon in his lifetime was due to what he wrote about men on horseback. Even now he is known to the great majority of his countrymen by such verses as _How we beat the Favourite_, _The Roll of the Kettledrum_, _From the Wreck_, and others of the kind. Poetry of this description may not be the highest possible, but Gordon did it very well. He did it so well that he may be said to have beaten all competitors in this particular line--and that despite his uneven quality, and his occasional lapses into the inartistic and the commonplace. His friend Kendall raised an incredulous smile by writing in the _Australasian_ that the shy and reserved man who said so little and rode so well was superior to Whyte Melville in the latter’s special domain. It was thought then that a compliment had been paid to Gordon; it would be considered now that the compliment was wholly to Whyte Melville. The Australian has out--distanced most of his rivals; but he did not know of the fact in his lifetime, and on the banks of the Styx he may not much care.

Of all these poems of action there is none better, perhaps none quite so fine as regards conception and execution, as the _Romance of Britomarte_. It is a remarkable piece of work. The artistic finish of it does not strike the reader while he is reading. To watch a really fine actor is to forget he is acting; to listen to a tale that is properly told is to forget the teller. It is rarely, indeed, that the mechanical processes do not obtrude themselves. Of genius there has never yet been a satisfactory definition; but the word may surely be reserved for the man or woman who can write a book, or act a piece, or compose a poem, of such quality that the reader or onlooker will forget for the moment everything but that which is placed before him. It is almost impossible to begin reading _Britomarte_ and to put it down unfinished, or to be conscious of anything but the dramatic interest of the story. The verve and swing of the opening lines

I’ll tell you a story--but pass the jack, And let us make merry to-night, my men--

carry the reader on a rushing wave from beginning to close. It is a tale of great and successful daring, purporting to be told by the chief actor himself; but no crudeness, or bad taste, or braggadocio mars the effect. Thinking of such a piece one forgets to be sorry for the author. Irrespective of fame, or the lack of fame, he must have known that the work was good; he must have known that criticism could neither help it, nor harm it; he must have experienced the joy of creation, which comes only to certain natures, and not often to them.

On the second class of his poetry, which may be described as fatalism set to music, opinions are likely to differ widely. The majority of people prefer _How we Beat the Favourite_ to _Doubtful Dreams_, but then the majority of people have from time immemorial been the worst judges of poetry. These verses that belong to the second class--the class not of action, but of brooding fancy--are well represented by the piece entitled _The Swimmer_. All the philosophy in them is contained in the four lines:--

A little season of light and laughter, Of love and leisure, and pleasure and pain, And a horror of outer darkness after, And dust returneth to dust again.

All the music of them is exemplified in the same piece, for example in the lines commencing:--

I would that with sleepy, soft embraces The sea would fold me, would find me rest In luminous depths of her secret places In gulfs where her marvels are manifest.

They are melancholy and mystic, and not hopefully inspiring, these verses in which the writer seeks to link the unsatisfactory present with the unknown beyond. Yet they have a sweetness of their own. The strings that throbbed in Gordon to the touch of his mother, the Night, have, indeed, a siren quality, akin to the lute of Orpheus when heard on the eve of everlasting sleep in the garden of Prosperinë. Preferable sometimes to the utterance of a noisy and blatant optimism--finer than the blare of brass instruments or the shouting of crowds--is the voice of the reed shaken by the wind.

As a final word something may be said of Gordon’s third and highest class of achievement, namely his blending in verse of the active _with_ the melancholic temper. He could do two things: he could write of action, and he could write of sadness. Now and again he combines in one poem all that is best and most distinctive in these two sides of his nature. There are times when he devotes his verse to enterprises of some kind, to feats on horseback, or to feats in war. There are other times when he discards action, and lets the sombre mood of the moment envelop him. The hour of his greatest and rarest inspiration is when he mixes the action with the sentiment; when he unites the warrior with the poet; when he fuses in the same fire the contrasted (but not necessarily antagonistic) temperaments of a Bayard and a Byron, of a Lancelot and a Lamartine.

It is undeniable that _The Rhyme of Joyous Garde_ represents the summit of Gordon’s poetic achievement. And the reason is that it brings together in complete harmony the two spirits which alternately strove for mastery in the life of the man. The movements in _The Rhyme of Joyous Garde_ are varied, but they fit into each other, and grow out of each other, as do the movements in a Beethoven symphony. First of all there is the atmosphere of pure idealism, of pure romance. There is the breath of the south wind, rich with the glory of the hawthorn and the frankincense. It is the man of action, who is also a poet, that is speaking. The setting is that of Arthurian England. Every line of the opening verse is flooded with the sentiment of a romantic country--a country in which brave men lived, and in which great deeds were done.

Against this rich, warm-tinted background is outlined a battle picture. Here begins the second movement. First the country itself, with its sunny fields and blossoming hedges; then the memory springing to life of great daring and heroic achievement:---

Pardie! I nearly had won that crown Which endureth more than a knight’s renown, When the pagan giant had got me down, Sore spent in the deadly grapple.

In a couple of resonant verses he explains why. The third movement begins when the woman enters. It is romance again, but romance of a more intense, more personal, more richly emotional kind. It forms the dominant note of this varied theme:--

The brown thrush sang through the briar and bower, All flushed or frosted with forest flower, In the warm sun’s wanton glances; And I grew deaf to the song-bird--blind To blossom that sweetened the sweet spring wind, I saw her only--a girl reclined In her girlhood’s indolent trances.

The realism of the picture is carried no further. With fine artistic sensibility Gordon recognises that he has said enough. The woman has entered; the man has grown blind to the blossom and deaf to the song-bird; the eternal tragedy, which is not altogether a tragedy, has begun.

For the rest, the poem plays upon two strings. Alternately there are echoes from the fields of undying renown, and again voices of sad and hopeless and unending regret. The well-known lines beginning:--

Then a steel-shod rush, and a glittering ring, And a crash of the spear staves splintering

are a memorable piece of versification. They arrest and perpetuate the fighting Arthurian spirit, they convey in words the actual clash of arms, and they bring back the forgotten mood of the man of personal valour as possibly no other verses have yet done. Such a word picture might be expected to leave weak and tame anything that followed; but with equal conviction, and with equal command of tone and touch, Gordon strikes again the chord of intense spiritual shame and sorrow, gradually merging it into one of religious appeal and exhortation. On this latter note the poem closes.

The man who had done this great thing surely deserved something in this existence, or in some other existence, in return for what he had given to the people among whom he lived. Surely, one likes to think, there must be, somewhere, at some time or another, a compensation, a recompense, for the tragedy of a life that merited so much success and vanished, or _seemed_ to vanish, in such utter dark.

VII

THEATRES AND AMUSEMENTS

Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson’s learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.

Australians are fond of the drama, but have no drama of their own. Even those people who talk occasionally of an Australian literature have nothing to say on the subject of an Australian stage. Not only the masterpieces, but the hack-pieces are borrowed; the star actors and actresses are borrowed also. In nothing is the population more imitative than in what pertains to theatres and theatre-going. It is only the buildings that can be described as the country’s own, and even here the great borrowing habit is illustrated by the names that are blazoned on the outside of them. “His Majesty’s,” and “Her Majesty’s,” and “The Princess,” and “The Royal” repeat themselves with monotonous iteration. The appearance of the majority of these theatres is fine and large, in the literal acceptation of the words. There are not many things that impress the visitor more than the size and the configuration and artistic finish of the places of amusement in Australia.

So far as the audiences are concerned, they are in a transition stage--the stage of development between being delighted with everything and being satisfied with nothing. It is still comparatively easy to attract a crowd to a performance that can boast of novel features, or of moderately good credentials from abroad. In fact, the Australian is willing, at the outset, to take a great deal on trust, even though he is quick to resent what looks like an imposition on his good nature. An indifferent company may have one successful tour of the continent, but it will scarcely have a second. It is the failure to recognise this fact that causes stranded actors to be plentiful as blackberries. The local theatre-goer is good-natured up to a certain point; beyond that point, it is impossible to move him.

Speaking generally, the country is not kind to its own theatrical children. The actor, like the prophet, has to look for his honours abroad. His fellow-countrymen find a difficulty in recognising him, or at least in approving him, until he has broken in upon them from over-seas. The stage in Australia is looked at, not through opera-glasses, but through a telescope; the thing near at hand is not clarified, but distorted. The man of purely local experience is in no danger of being spoilt by adulation. However tolerated or even admired he may have been, he is expected to seek the shades of a graceful retirement the moment that Brown, of Jones’s English theatre, is announced. There is not an Australian-born actor or actress who could not testify to this fact; many of them resent it, but others have come to accept it as a matter of course.

It is true, that there are among the four million people who inhabit Australia, a certain number possessed of discernment. In the exercise of this faculty they now and again perceive that an individual playing a comparatively small part is endowed with special ability. Then, if they are sufficiently interested, they may take steps to secure his acquaintance; or disdaining this formality, they may buttonhole him, remark that they have been impressed by his performances, and invite him to discuss the situation over a glass of wine. An invitation of this kind is seldom refused. The supporters of local talent remark to the Thespian that he is being wasted in Australia; that there is no scope for him in Australia; that he really ought to remove himself from Australia at the first opportunity. It is then discovered that this is the advice his friends and relatives have been tendering him for months past. If he declines to go, or suggests that his own country is quite good enough for him, he is set down as a man of no ambition, and probably of very little soul. More often than not, he is persuaded to go. The favourable opinion entertained of him is found, by a curious chance, to coincide with his opinion of himself. He goes. Perhaps he will be given a few small parts in London and return to Australia a hero. Possibly he will be swallowed out of sight in the world’s vortex, and that will be the end of him. More probably, he will return disgusted and disillusioned, not with his own abilities, but with the blasts of indifference and the _chevaux-de-frise_ of cosmopolitan neglect that have met him abroad.

If the actor of purely local experience finds it hard to make a living, the task is quite beyond the capacity of the local dramatic _author_. One or two men born at the Antipodes have made their mark in England as writers of plays. But that has only been after leaving the country of their birth, and after surviving years of hard work and discouragement. Where is the rising school of Australian dramatists? Where are even the faint beginnings of it? And where are the supporters of such a school? Echo answers to these questions. It is curious that there should be such a blankness of enterprise and of inspiration in this domain. The country is out of its literary swaddling clothes; it can support any number of theatres; it can find minor parts for any number of Australian actors and actresses; but it is incapable--in its present frame of mind, it is totally incapable--of supporting a single Australian dramatist. The idea that it might be asked to do so seems never to have been seriously considered. There have, indeed, been a few performances, mostly by third-rate, barn-storming companies, of plays dealing with the Kelly Gang. And that excellent comedian and manager, Mr Bland Holt, has given us a few stage pictures representing Sydney and Port Philip harbours, and a few melodramatic incidents supposed to have taken place in Australia. But if an audience, on being invited to witness high-class comedy or tragedy of the more intellectual sort, were to find itself confronted with Circular Quay and Darlinghurst, or with Collins Street and Toorak, or with the people inhabiting them, it would receive such a shock that it would not recover until it had got outside the theatre door--and possibly not then. It would feel at first amazed, and then insulted. The recognised understanding is, that nothing worth looking at in the theatrical sense, and nothing worthy of presentation to an enlightened public, can by any chance take place unless it takes place in England, or on the continent of Europe, or in America, or in Japan.