think
That on that healthy-hearted man there lay
The wild specific curse which seems to cling
For ever to the Poet's twofold life!

To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid
Two years ago on Lionel Michael's grave
A tender leaf of my regard; yea I,
Who culled a garland from the flowers of song
To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,
The sad disciple of a shining band
Now gone! to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name
I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true
That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul
Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop
From his high seat to take the offering,
And read it with a sigh for human friends,
In human bonds, and gray with human griefs.

And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,
I stand to-day as lone as he who saw
At nightfall through the glimmering moony mists,
The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,
And strained in vain to hear the going voice.

Henry Kendall.

PREFACE.

The poems of Gordon have an interest beyond the mere personal one which
his friends attach to his name. Written, as they were, at odd times and
leisure moments of a stirring and adventurous life, it is not to be
wondered at if they are unequal or unfinished. The astonishment of those
who knew the man, and can gauge the capacity of this city to foster
poetic instinct, is that such work was ever produced here at all.
Intensely nervous, and feeling much of that shame at the exercise of the
higher intelligence which besets those who are known to be renowned in
field sports, Gordon produced his poems shyly, scribbled them on scraps
of paper, and sent them anonymously to magazines. It was not until he
discovered one morning that everybody knew a couplet or two of "How we
Beat the Favourite" that he consented to forego his anonymity and appear
in the unsuspected character of a versemaker. The success of his
republished "collected" poems gave him courage, and the unreserved
praise which greeted "Bush Ballads" should have urged him to forget or
to conquer those evil promptings which, unhappily, brought about his
untimely death.

Adam Lindsay Gordon was the son of an officer in the English army, and
was educated at Woolwich, in order that he might follow the profession
of his family. At the time when he was a cadet there was no sign of
either of the two great wars which were about to call forth the strength
of E