, one in Spring's:

January is full of 'breaths of myrrh, and subtle hints of rose-lands';

She is the warm, live month of lustre--she
Makes glad the land and lulls the strong sad sea;

while February is 'the true Demeter,' and

With rich warm vine-blood splashed from heel to knee,
Comes radiant through the yellow woodlands.

Each month, as it passes, calls for new praise and for music different
from our own. July is a 'lady, born in wind and rain'; in August

Across the range, by every scarred black fell,
Strong Winter blows his horn of wild farewell;

while October is 'the queen of all the year,' the 'lady of the yellow
hair,' who strays 'with blossom-trammelled feet' across the
'haughty-featured hills,' and brings the Spring with her. We must
certainly try to accustom ourselves to the mopoke and the sarsaparilla
plant, and to make the gum-tree and the buddawong as dear to us as the
olives and the narcissi of white Colonus. After all, the Muses are great
travellers, and the same foot that stirred the Cumnor cowslips may some
day brush the fallen gold of the wattle blossoms and tread delicately
over the tawny bush-grass.

Mr. Sladen has, of course, a great belief in the possibilities of
Australian poetry. There are in Australia, he tells us, far more writers
capable of producing good work than has been assumed. It is only
natural, he adds, that this should be so, 'for Australia has one of those
delightful climates conducive to rest in the open air. The middle of the
day is so hot that it is really more healthful to lounge about than to
take stronger exercise.' Well, lounging in the open air is not a bad
school for poets, but it largely depends on the lounger. What strikes
one on reading over Mr. Sladen's collection is the depressing
provinciality of mood and manner in almost every writer. Page follows
page, and we find nothing but echoes without music, reflections without
beauty, second-rate magazine verses and third-rate verses for Colonial
newspapers. Poe seems to have had some influence--at least, there are
several parodies of his method--and one or two writers have read Mr.
Swinburne; but, on the whole, we have artless Nature in her most
irritating form. Of course Australia is young, younger even than America
whose youth is now one of her oldest and most hallowed traditions, but
the entire want of originality of treatment is curious. And yet not so
curious, perhaps, after all.