black
gorges, a story of sullen despair.' No leaves fall from the trees, but
'from the melancholy gum strips of white bark hang and rustle. Great
grey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights of
cockatoos stream out, shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks
and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter.'
The aborigines aver that, when night comes, from the bottomless depth of
some lagoon a misshapen monster rises, dragging his loathsome length
along the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant,
and around a fire dance natives painted like skeletons. All is
fear-inspiring and gloomy. No bright fancies are linked with the
memories of the mountains. Hopeless explorers have named them out of
their sufferings--Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair.

In Australia alone (says Mr. Clarke) is to be found the Grotesque, the
Weird, the strange scribblings of nature learning how to write. But
the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of the
fantastic land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty
of loneliness. Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness,
he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the
hieroglyphs of haggard gum-trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted
with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern
Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of
that wild dream-land termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet
of our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his
heritage of desert sand better than all the bountiful richness of
Egypt.

Here, certainly, is new material for the poet, here is a land that is
waiting for its singer. Such a singer Gordon was not. He remained
thoroughly English, and the best that we can say of him is that he wrote
imperfectly in Australia those poems that in England he might have made
perfect.

Poems. By Adam Lindsay Gordon. (Samuel Mullen.)

THE POETS' CORNER--IX

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 30, 1889.)

Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments, and it was
probably in one of his happiest and, certainly, in one of his most
careless moods that Mr. Justice Denman conceived the idea of putting the
early history of Rome into doggerel verse for the benefit of a little boy
of the name of Jack. Poor Jack! He is still, w