nks Eucalyptian
Seem carved, like weird columns Egyptian,
With curious device--quaint inscription,
And hieroglyph strange;

In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles
'Twixt shadow and shine,
When each dew-laden air draught resembles
A long draught of wine;
When the sky-line's blue burnish'd resistance
Makes deeper the dreamiest distance,
Some song in all hearts hath existence,--
Such songs have been mine.

As a rule, however, Gordon is distinctly English, and the landscapes he
describes are always the landscapes of our own country. He writes about
mediaeval lords and ladies in his Rhyme of Joyous Garde, about Cavaliers
and Roundheads in The Romance of Britomarte, and Ashtaroth, his longest
and most ambitious poem, deals with the adventures of the Norman barons
and Danish knights of ancient days. Steeped in Swinburne and bewildered
with Browning, he set himself to reproduce the marvellous melody of the
one and the dramatic vigour and harsh strength of the other. From the
Wreck is a sort of Australian edition of the Ride to Ghent. These are
the first three stanzas of one of the so-called Bush Ballads:

On skies still and starlit
White lustres take hold,
And grey flashes scarlet,
And red flashes gold.
And sun-glories cover
The rose, shed above her,
Like lover and lover
They flame and unfold.

. . . . .

Still bloom in the garden
Green grass-plot, fresh lawn,
Though pasture lands harden
And drought fissures yawn.
While leaves, not a few fall,
Let rose-leaves for you fall,
Leaves pearl-strung with dewfall,
And gold shot with dawn.

Does the grass-plot remember
The fall of your feet
In Autumn's red ember
When drought leagues with heat,
When the last of the roses
Despairingly closes
In the lull that reposes
Ere storm winds wax fleet?

And the following verses show that the Norman Baron of Ashtaroth had read
Dolores just once too often:

Dead priests of Osiris, and Isis,
And Apis! that mystical lore,
Like a nightmare, conceived in a crisis
Of fever, is studied no more;
Dead Magian! yon star-troop that spangles
The arch of yon firmament vast
Looks calm, like a host of white angels
On dry dust of votaries past.

On seas unexplored can the ship shun
Sunk rocks? Can man fathom life's links,
Past or