VICTOR J. DALEY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 252, 23 October 1926, Page 40

VICTOR J. DALEY.

IRISH-AUSTRALIAN VAGABOND MINSTREL a Light-hearted romantic bohemian. melodies sung to a celtic harp. (By ERNEST L. EYRE.) O, the world Iβ wondrous fair. When the tide of life's at flood; There is magic In the air. There is music in the blood. j And a glamour draws us on To the distance, rainbow-spanned, ; And the road we tread upon | Is the road to Fairyland! So sang the twenty-year-old careless Irish lad, Victor J. 'Daley, who voyaged to Australia, his El Dorado, in 1878, found the golden sunshine and free life to hie liking, and permanently remained there. He had few home ties and scanty funds. His father, a British Army soldier, was dead, and his mother, of Scottish descent, had married again, hence his voluntary desertion of the firesidenook. The poet was born on the sth September, 1858, in Erin, in the County of Meath, at Navan, a place portrayed by* him in gracious tines:— There Is a town in Ireland, A little town I know; Its girls have tender Irish eyes, Beneath their brows of snow. And in the fields around It, The fairy hawthorns grow. After adopting, various vocations, including gardening and salesmanship at the Melbourne Exhibition of 1880, Daley eventually became a journalist, and one of the initial contributors to the Sydney "Bulletin."

Gifted with a vivid imagination, and a plaintively-witching effortless style— (inherited from poetic princely Celtic ancestors who, deprived of their estates by Oliver Cromwell, mourned in heartbroken songs their fallen fortunes) — he wrote "dainty, opalescent lyrics with hints of fairy music," and soon achieved renown throughout Australia as "the 'Bulletin's' Irish Singer."

He penned the haunting beautiful words, with a lyrical cry in them:— ; The old dead flowers of bygone Bummers,' The old sweet songs that are no more sung; The rose-red dawns that were welcome

comers. When you and I and the world were

young, Are lost, O love, to the light for ever. . . . Daley, an intellectual vagabond, loved the towns, and cherished no affection for the bush. He liked to be near the great throbbing sympathetic heart of humanity. Nevertheless, he evidently experienced outback life, because his drought poems are convincing realism.

It was a da; of sombre beat; The still dense air was void of sound And life; no wing of bird did beat A little breeze through It; the ground Was like live ashes to the feet! From the black hills that loomed around The valley, many a sudden spire Of flame shot up. . . > The earth and sky Appeared until the troubled eye A roof of smoke, a floor of fire.

The poet, a true Bohemian, sought cheerful company, and shared, with a brilliant galaxy of artistic "stars," the. pleasant irregularities of Bohemia—an oasis in the desert of commercialism— but always he kept his soul joyous and clean. Failings are not vices. In later life, as the temperamental revellers died, or were widely scattered, and his own rosy hopes of abiding world-fame collapsed, he exquisitely voiced Bohemia's requiem:—

The wine and ale are done, . The frency and the fun. The glorious hurrah! The world says: "Take your task," Quite empty is the cask. Adieu, Bohemia! Closed is the tavern door; The kingdom Is ■no nore— The kingdom that I knew. When I was mad for Art, And birds sang In my heart— Bohemia, adieu!

Erin's son could be grave at well as gay. In majestic solemn cadence, like a Dead March, he frequently expressed tad thoughts. I quote from "Fragments," a truly Tennysonian poem:—

Ail things beneath the ttUl akj seem, Bound by the • spell of a sweet dream; In the dusk-forest, draamlngly, Droops' slowly down . each plumed head. The' river flowfng softly by Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea. Dreams of the unseen stars, and I Am dreaming of toe dreamless dead.

This observant Irishman, a master of the rarer forms of verse, brought into Australian literature, a gentle unsullied influence, and exotic classical refinement, hitherto generally lacking there. Hie poetry, slenderly spun, was pure gold. With deft delicate fingers he touched his Irish harp, and carolled:— What shall a man remember. In days when he is old;. And life Is a dying ember, And fame a story told? Power —that came to leave him? Wealth— to the wild waves blown? Fame— came to deceive him? Ah, no I Sweet love alone Honour, and wealth, and power May all like dreams depart— Bat love I» a fadeless flower, Whose roots are in the heart. Life, never taken seriously by him, and too precious to be wasted in wearying struggles for money or position, both sordid prizes—to Daley a merry pageant. His idea of success was the creation of fragile verses, "charged," to quote Bertram Stevens, eminent Australian litterateur, "with the melancholy regret of the Gelt for vanished glories, and the beauty of remote things." He was not a deeply-emotional writer, like his friend Henry Lawson, nor had he the racy vigour of Lindsay Gordon and "Banjo" Patereon, or the opulence of JRoderic Quinn. • . "feather "ha preferred the faint green dawn to the sunrise, the dusk to the sunset," and he lived in a world of romance. Daley possessed more than talent; he had genius. As a sonnet writer he was unexcelled. There is nothing tawdry, no false sentiment, about hie glorious poem "Avatar":— M ¥ le i.i the beaut of all bygone years; I hold within triumphant arms to-day R^-,'^ yell S eße of *e< BB Passed away. Gudrun's, and GuineAn smote 8 SLT* Mc Ar St*e spears fra heroes In that ancient And gl fierce Achilles did great Hector While sad Andromache wept widow's tears. Nature is not so rich that nhe can waste, The wonders of her working wantonly ' Blanaid the Fair, Rosalie the Chaste And burning Sappho, Queen of Melody Axe born again, ana all their charms embraced • - jo one fair woman who was bom toe met

Although hie published poems failed to arouse enthusiasm in England—owing doubtless to lack of distinctive Australian colour—the author did not uselessly repine, but remained joyful in the knowledge that his literary associates idolised him as "the poets' poet." In 1902, when consumption gripped him (strange how genius is frequently housed in an impaired frame!) the generosity of numerous admirers enabled Daley to voyage to the South Seas, whence, however, unrelieved, he soon returned.

Then he stayed at Orange, on the New South Wales tableland, amongst an Irish population, but he was lonely there, got no better, and longed for Sydney's narrow streets, although—

Nature, God preserve her well, is kindly Irish, too; The winds croon Irish melodies the swaying gum trees through ; And ev'ry little hill about, with green cap cocked and curled. Says: "Come upon the top of mc, and look around tlie world I

I am not aware whether the suffering, simple-hearted, but irrepressible minstrel—who hoped to be soon "young and strong again"—carried out, when he went back to hie beloved town, his quaintly-expressed promise to avoid irregular habits, and late hours, and "keep good company," a difficult achievement for a Bohemian.

But I do know that his work still sparkled with youthful abandon and buoyancy, and retained the freshness of dew-wet roses; —

High, clear and high, the soaring skylark sings, Love! Love! Love! the Joy of life and woe; Throbs, throbs his heart as upward on thrilling wings. Far. far be soars from this dim world below. Was it a skylark's voice, or a soul's triumphant eong, We heard In the days gone by in the woods of Dandeoons?

Satisfied to live solely by the sale of his verse and prose, he acquired no worldly wealth, yet jested to the end, blessed with a tranquil spirit, and secure in the conviction that he bequeathed Australia a priceless heritage—poems of fire.

He was buried at Waverley, near Kendall, Dalley and Deniehy, those other Celtic authors whose songs have enriched the land of the Southern Cross.