THE BOOKFELLOW.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 73, 27 March 1909, Page 9

THE BOOKFELLOW.

Written for the Post by A. G. Stephens. Copyright. All Rights Reserved, JARRAHLAND JINGLES. Life — beer — and ants. The bard descants Over the golden West ; file speech is free, his ecstasy Untrammelled by a vest; The life appears a glorious brew. The beer, it seems, is glorious, too - But, W.A., A:W., Those ants,? Ants — life — and beer. We suffer here An East grown pale, effete; For puny men in city pen No vivid _ pulses beat. Life 'West is full of derring-do, The Western ants are full of you: But, W.A. A.W., That beer? Beer — anla — and life. One crowded hour Is .vorth the yoar3 we drone ; Find, if you wish, gold in the difah Ot verses here dry-blown. Out West the beer is called "shypoo," The ants are called by pet names blue. But, W.A.. A.W., That lifo! The life's the thing; and the literature's a mock sun, a second-hand garment, an abject ort and imitation. Win. S. Blunt, who breeds the Arab horse, defends the Egyptian man, and rhymes in 'rebelling characteristically against the rules, is careful to point out that he took to meditation only when he grew too old for action. "I hold," quotha, "that while a man has heart to do and stomach to enjoy" he should employ them in throbbing and digesting —"and others, if they will, may tell the news." Men may fall, in fact, on stepping stones of their live selves to lower things— i.e., to books and.authorship. It seems obvious; yet the particular charm of the obvious, in this fluctuant universe of ours, is to be never precisely what it seems, and often to seem in essence its own opposite. A girl under the moon, with the appropriate conjunction of a masculine planet-Ursa Major, for choice, possibly— may seem to herself to attain the ultimate ecstasy of mortal things ; yet does she ? Only as far as one girl, one moon, one planet will go. But an imaginative mind, peaceiully contemplating the beach and the cosmic process with a cigar on a verandah, can without trouble subtend the ecstasies of a hundred girls. All the moons of the ages shine for it; all the constellations are favourable and ardent. And the mind is untroubled by sandmes ; its shoes are not squashy and full of the shore; nothing inadvertent rises irom behind a hummock to distort its vision of bliss. Given the capacity to dream, the deed becomes futile. From my eyry i n Auckland I watch Sir Joseph Ward, like a beautiful political angel, beating ineffectual wings against his cash-box ; and it seems to me entirely fitting that he, and not I should do this thing. I watch Tom. Mackenzie labouring night and day, day and night, at his time-old task of mingling utile cum dulce, the tourist with the scenery; and cheerfully I give glory to Tom on the nighest peaks that he can climb. Why should "I miss one headache in the addition? one pant alone the personally inspected path? The whole world is hid m a grain of sand ; and the prehensile imagination pockets it as easily as a billiard-ball. It is admitted that a certain amount of doing is needed as foundation for the dream. The great Buddha lived fully in preparation for his epoch-marking loaf • fu , before YoU can get the jewel out of •t v US the lotus Dmsfc nower - Only if the dream and the business be indeed one, it is surely irrational to pigeonhole each in its period of life, as Mr. Blunt seems to inculcate. Why not let every days ardour sink behind the hills of dream, as the sun sinks, and sun-crea-tures? and write the imaginative diary while the emotion is fresh. Or, if some business extend beyond the four andtwenty hours, or if some emotion cannot be" recollected in tranquillity while you sympathise with a fellah who hasn't any Arab steed : then whenever leisuro and writing materials are convenient, Mr. Blunt would persuade us that until the age of forty-five or thereabouts he did, and after that age stopped doing in order to tell the news. This is altogether too formal an arrangement of life— and the news grows cold. The journalist's motto, "Give us each day our daily column"— when we can dodge two, or three, or the four column report of the City Council that rears its horrid head like the sea-serpent, in Otago— woidd suit better authors too. And it does. Here is "Dryblower" of Western Aus tralia, whose pen-name has so far supplanted his family name of Murphy that even in the bosom of that family, tis said, he is "Dryblower" and no other, and "Received from Mr. Dryblower" is the landlord's formula. While he lives he writes. It' is his office to rhyme the hot western day as soon as its glowing sun is set; and the verse of his running pen has acquired a prodigious western notoriety. Now, "The Sunday Times," of Perth, publishes a selection under the title of "Jarrahland Jingles," price half-a-crown— the most Australian book seen for several years. To "dry blow," of course, is to take advantage of the western wind to compensate for the western lack of water In the rainless E.W. the prospector having "dollied"— or pounded with a short club that suggests a doll— bis quartz into dust, pours the dust shoulder high from a dish to a dish, when the wild wind is supposed to blow away the lighter particles, and the heavy gold falls vertically to earth. When it is there : it isn't always. But in the earJy nineties there was a good deal of it: and those were stirring days for Wesi Australia. From the East came an irruption of gold-seekers that made a revolution in the placid pastoral State. The oldest residents cried out in anguish joist as they did in Otago in '61 and '62 that their place would lose "its old identity." And in Perth as in Dunedin, the new blood has proved the greatest blessing that could befallthough Dunedin, once more grown elderly, needs a new stream of red corpuscles. Perth, nearer to the rich source, remains one of the liveliest and most progressive cities of the Commonwealth; and the miner has helped agriculturist and pastoralist to abounding prosperity. ° "Dryblower" has seen the fifteen years' growth, has "followed the pad" with pick and dolly and dish, and rhymed while he blew, as well as since There is Australian gold in "Jarrahland 1 Jingles," however imperfectly separated from the tailings. "DryWower" owns Irish descent, and "in Ireland all vitality is vocal." His verses are often crude, but they are vivid ; and their vernacular is the common thought and speech of the West. They throb with the Australian heart, they are alive with Australian manhood, and so are to be valued. Irish humour, the Irish fecundity of ideas, the Irish fluency of language, are brought to represent Australian life; and the result is good. . Nothing so close to the adventurous romance of the pioneers is being written, in the East ; and if The Sunday Times will publish the kindred rhyms of "Prospect Good" and "Bluebush" we shall have three books of Tyrtaeus well worthy to be cherished in these countries. In West Australia the mining days of the 'nineties, had the greatest human merit— the merit of strong manhood.. In

the struggle, with the desert for the gold hot life was squandered recklessly ; but while it lived it fought and exulted, and when it died it flung to waste of sand and brazen sky the grand defiance of unconquered Prometheus. The destiny of Australia is still hoarded under the sun. The Northern race has to transform itself and gain from summer's heat, like the Arabs, the enduring force its ancestors drew from winter's cold. Not on the coast or in the cities, but in the torrid interior of the country are the true Australians being bred. And when they have learned to master their environment, there is warrant for believing that no manhood or womanhood will Jiold more splendid vitality than their?. 1 ' The western apprenticeship of" adaptation, with its panting effort, its dogged endurance, its pride of success, its desperate failure, its grins, its curses, its pests, and its thirst, is reflected intimately in "Dryblower's" book. Often, as might be expected, the incidents seem to overshadow the substance. The ants bite furiously, there are a score of synonyms for the drink eternally craved; but- the resplendent lifo seines through withal. The best of the book is its atmosphere, not its achievement ; and the atmosphere cannot be quoted. We can quote only for the view of literature, but we commend "Jarrahland Jingles" to manly readers for the view of life. THE LODES THAT UNDER-"LIE." O calm and clear the liar lies Who writes reports on mines ; Behold what knowledge deep and wise His legend intertwines! But ah, if he should own tho lease Supposed to hold the lode, Behold, his lying powers increase — Observe his matchless mode. He may not have an ounce of quartz, The reel his lease may miss ; But in" Ins Rougemont-like report THE REEF RUNS DOWN LIKE THIS. But if perchance the reef is found, And proven rich and wide Within another party's ground Who pegged him side by side; He can't peg in upon the end — That's taken long ago — And if the reef line doesn't bend He hasn't Buckley's show. But shifting reefs is labour light, And perfect is his bliss ; So, as his lease is on the right, It under lies like this. But should his lease located ba Upon the left-hand side, The reef in which the gold shows free Towards the left he'll guide. For that which baulks a modest man A mining scribe can do; And alterations on a plan Will swing a reef askew; So once again, with pencil deft, He plumbs the earth's abyss, And, as his lease is on the left, The reef runs down like this. But if he has uo part or share Ground tho golden ground, A tinker's damn he doesn't care If ANY reef is found ; He care not if it goes an ounce, Or only goes a grain — But if the owners try to bounce They're soon amongst the slain; He slays them as a mad Malay Slays foemen with a kris, And in the myiing news next daj; T H E I R R E E C v T S o v T L I X E T H s THE RHYMES OUR HEARTS CAN READ. (Three out of seven Stanzas.) We are sated of songs that drone the praise Of a world beyond our ken ; We are bored by the ballads of beaten ways, And milk-and-water men ; We are tired of the tales the lovers To the cooing, amorous dove ; We have banished the miiiEtrelsy of old, And the lyric of languid love. While we stand where the ways of men have end, And the untrod tracks commence. We weary of songs the poets penned In pastoral indolence ; The sleepy sonnet that lovers make Where weepiug willows arch, Cannot the^ passionate soul awake Of men who outward march. Our harps are hung in the towering trees, And tho mulga low and grey ; Our ballads are sung by every breeze That flogs the sea to spray ; We want no lay of a moonlit strand, No idyll of daisied mead, For the v rhymes that our hearts can understand Are the rhymes our hearts can read. Tell us of men whose axes bite The hearts of the mountain gum ; Sing of the pioneers who fight To waken tho desert dumb ; Write of tho gaunt and grimy band That the far-away world forgets As it pats the cheek and strokes the hand Of its curled and scented pets ; Tell of the slaves who sweat und strive Deep down from the light of day, While the spoon-fed drones of tho human hive^ Are gnulging their paltry pay ; Write of the men for whom God waits — Men of a Christ-like creed — Sing of the mates who die for mates, In tho rhymes our hearts can read.