AN AUSTRALIAN POET

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 112, 14 May 1927, Page 21

AN AUSTRALIAN POET

Mr. John Bernard OUlara died on 31st March at the .ago of 62 years. He was one of.'the best known of Australian , poets. He was born at Bendigo in : 1864,'and was educated at .Carlton College,.and-at Ormond,College, University of Melbourne. In his University years.; he,.'hacL many successes, and in 1886 he ; was appointed lecturer in mathematics, and physics at Ormond College., ■ Cater "he' became principal of the.South Melbourne College,'and held the position for twcnty:eiglit years. Mr. O'Hara was a scholarly poet and showed much skill, in the sonnet and in other setforms>;and he also possessed a gift for ilyrieal writing. - He turned early to verse, for Jn. 1870 he won a competition foria'fprize.poem ,at the Melbourne Industrial and-Juvenile Exhibition. His volumes, are "Songs of the South" (1891,-with a second.series in 1895), '' LyHcs. of Nature. (1899), ''A Book of Sonnets"; (1902), I'bdes and Lyrics": (1906),"Calypso and -.Other Poems" ; (1912), "The Poems of J. 8.. a. volume of selections, and a'book, of'new poems entitled "At Eventide^'' -The ; " Australasian" republishes,a poem called "Sub Vesperum;": in, which -Mr. O'Hara wrote:—

How ■ will it comfr—ln what strange twilight 'Betting—-' . ...' ' The hour supreme. When, easting off the fever and the fretting ■'...■,»;■••■"■ Of life, tain dream, | Into the silence I link, forgetting ' Earth's transient gleam? 11 know not; but with spirit still undaunted, Jn hope and faith, I'll meet the foe tout In youth's time I taunted . • -With every breath, retrials of all the nays he' haunted— '. nimways of Death. > Trusting that He Whose pity ever mirrors - His marvellous love. And sets our. fe*jt from the coiling errors Sin tubtly wove, Will guide me bravely through tho last dim . -terrors .■ :•■' ■; ■.•■:■■-•' . -..,■ To ltfeabove.