Youth is rarely original.

There are, however, some exceptions. Henry Clarence Kendall had a true
poetic gift. The series of poems on the Austral months, from which we
have already quoted, is full of beautiful things; Landor's Rose Aylmer is
a classic in its way, but Kendall's Rose Lorraine is in parts not
unworthy to be mentioned after it; and the poem entitled Beyond Kerguelen
has a marvellous music about it, a wonderful rhythm of words and a real
richness of utterance. Some of the lines are strangely powerful, and,
indeed, in spite of its exaggerated alliteration, or perhaps in
consequence of it, the whole poem is a most remarkable work of art.

Down in the South, by the waste without sail on it--
Far from the zone of the blossom and tree--
Lieth, with winter and whirlwind and wail on it,
Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea.
Weird is the mist from the summit to base of it;
Sun of its heaven is wizened and grey;
Phantom of light is the light on the face of it--
Never is night on it, never is day!
Here is the shore without flower or bird on it;
Here is no litany sweet of the springs--
Only the haughty, harsh thunder is heard on it,
Only the storm, with a roar in its wings!

Back in the dawn of this beautiful sphere, on it--
Land of the dolorous, desolate face--
Beamed the blue day; and the beautiful year on it
Fostered the leaf and the blossom of grace.
Grand were the lights of its midsummer noon on it--
Mornings of majesty shone on its seas;
Glitter of star and the glory of moon on it
Fell, in the march of the musical breeze.
Valleys and hills, with the whisper of wing in them,
Dells of the daffodil--spaces impearled,
Flowered and flashed with the splendour of spring in them,
Back in the morn of this wonderful world.

Mr. Sladen speaks of Alfred Domett as 'the author of one of the great
poems of a century in which Shelley and Keats, Byron and Scott,
Wordsworth and Tennyson have all flourished,' but the extracts he gives
from Ranolf and Amohia hardly substantiate this claim, although the song
of the Tree-God in the fourth book is clever but exasperating.

A Midsummer's Noon, by Charles Harpur, 'the grey forefather of Australian
poetry,' is pretty and graceful, and Thomas Henry's Wood-Notes and Miss
Veel's Saturday Night are worth reading; but, on the whole, the
Australian poets are extremely dull