A Wonderful Word-Painter.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1931, Page 7 (Supplement)

A Wonderful Word-Painter.

My ballad-carolling acquaintance lis-1 tened intently behind tobacco-clouds as I ventured to say: "Observant E. J.j Brady not only possesses that rarity; 'the human touch,' but has exceptional. descriptive powers. He exotically de- j lineates, with the sure mastery ofi genius,"—the singer stirred uneasily at| my side —"Tasmania's blossoming apple orchards; Victoria's old-time gold diggings; New South Wales' billabongs and expansive sheep runs; Queensland's birds, pineapple plantations, and picturesque sugar mills on crocodileinfested rivers; South Australia's profusion of varied wild flowers, and Kalgoorlie's camel-pads of the sunset. Especially is he enamoured of Queensland's waterways, where: Brown eyes alert, wing feathers preened, self-conscious as she feeds, The black duck like a widow plump floats gaily through the weeds. Higk-poised upon his bending rush, a bluecap warbles clear, A song of corn and sugarcane and summer all the year. In umbrage cool of tree and vine the rambling houses doze. Magnolias at Iheir porches bloom, and by their gates the rose; Guavas in their gardens grow; the smooth banana spreads ! Its tropic shade and bunched delight above the milking sheds. If sometimes the poet's verse is too decorative and brilliantly coloured, and the meaning a triflo obscure" —my friend of the morning inadvertently burned his fingers with a match —"and if occasionally other minor virtues are sacrificed to graceful, melodious versification, nevertheless the lines veil a luring appeal which iuduces poetry lovers to return to them again anil again. The spirit of romance (alas, almost dead in this prosaic age!) permeates the work of the gifted survivor of the old 'Bulletin' poetic school that boasted such famous bush bards as Henry Lawson, 'Banjo' Paterson, Edwin Dyson, Will Ogilvie, and Barcroft Boake. All these poets were rovers, and understood Western life, for, as our literary idol pertinently wrote: We can never rest in cities, as our wise Bush Mother knows; Let the merchant to his markets where the golden current flows; But the busliman's feot must wander In the open over yonder, Where old myall droops his branches and the silver saltbush grows. Not in crowded squares or highways; not in terraces and rows ; Not in tiled suburban cages shall our life days surely close. When the old Bush voices woo us, When the West-land whispers to us, From her tree and trackless places where the silver saltbush grows. "I alius liked Brady's sougs o' childhood: he's best at those," drawled freckled Sandy, as the singing bushman arose, east a log on the flames, and leaned against a gum, in the-shadows. "You, remember, when we was innocent an' happy bush kids, playin' 'Kingy, ringy rosy' under mornin's blue skies, how our school sweethearts waited 3hyly at the sliprails for us? He describes all that, an 1 ho tells how, when lizards basked on fences in the spring sun o' thirty years ago, we trod the frosty grass, and swopped hard quinces an' yams for tops an' marbles, using" a fallen', hollow, snake-infested log as market place! Ah, them was the days, an' " "Pardon my interruption," emotionally interposed the Carolling Horseman, stepping into the fire's glow, "but I clearly remember the concluding verses of the poem referred to," and his rich baritone notes, echoing in soug through lonely, heat-gnarled gums, wafted my thoughts from arid, hot Australia to tuy native Ao-tea-roa, and the tui-musical, rain-jewelled puriris around my boyhood's home:

"Ringy, ringy, rosy"—acrosa the years I hear The voices from the school yard uprising strong and clcar; And all the proud achievement, the failure and the strife. That make tho sordid total of this, our mortal life; The pomp and human splendour, the Future and the Past, When weighed within the balance seem little.things at last. To be a World's liamortal, to be a world's unknown, Win monument of marble, or simple slab of stone—How little matters either, when every foe and friend Must come to lie together in quiet at the end! When pays each generation, of high or humble birth, Its tribute unto Caesar, Its dust unto the lEarth ; A Midnight Cattle Stampede. The singer's voico was drowned in the sudden tumult created by stampeding, wild-eyed steers fear maddened by a kangaroo caught in a wire fence! Running frantically to their hobbled horses, the drovers, accompanied by the vocalist, presently galloped away to assist their brother watchers to stem the devastating torrent of hoofs and horns! Fainter and fainter became the disturbance —the scattered cattle were not "rounded up'' for a week —and in the chilly summer dawn a dying steeir-horned drover, one of the original trio of night riders whom we had met, was brought by his solicitous mates to camp. The Singing Bushman bent sympathetically over the tortured man, who asked: "Aren't you"—chokingly—"the poet Bra—?" "Gently, friend," as the tired head fell for ever back. . . . Yet I often ponder, while gazing perplexedly upon a portrait in a well-known anthology of Australian versa, over the striking likeness between Edwin James Brady and the carolling Colonial-Irishman!