A FORGOTTEN AUSTRALIAN POET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2672, 31 May 1905, Page 76

A FORGOTTEN AUSTRALIAN POET.

By Jxsarn Mackat.

11. Of Charles Hurpur's reflective fragments, the crispest is "Onward," albeit no variant on the worn, yet never outworn, lijccelsior iheme : Hast thou won the heart of glory, Hast thou charmed the tongue of story, And wouldst pause, then, for appiause, then, Underneath the stars of time? Vain the lure! That word sublime — God's great one word, Silent never, pealefch. ever, Onward! Truth and virtue hast thou wrought for, Faith and freedom hast thou fought for, And then shrmkest, for thou thmkest Paid ib all thy debt in time? Vain the thought! That word sublime^ — God's great one word, Silent never, pealeth ever, Onward ! From endeavour to endeavour, Journeying with the hours forever, Or aspirmg or acquiring, This, O man, is life in time, Urged by that primal -word sublime — God's great one word, Silent never, pealing ever, Onward ! Harpur was not dramatic. Nowhere does he even attempt drama or that primeval core of drama, the ballad, unless in the not very powerful "Aboriginal Mother's Lament," which commemorates one of those tragedies, alas ! shamefully common in old Australia. Nor has he one rollicking song of the road, or topical verse, such a* abound in Brunton Stephens and the moderns. He almost eliminates the human element from his actual horizon, save for domestic touches, more creditable throughout to heart tnan head. His "Creek of the Four Graves " has attracted some attention, as a faithful picture of one of those other innumerable tragedies once so rife in the bush. But the murder of the .sleeping drovers, and the escape of the surprised sentinel, is told in little more than measured prose, save for an occasional descriptive phrase like this : Then her full light, mi silvery sequence still Cascading forth from ridgy slope to slope, Chased mass by mass the broken darkness down Into the dense-brushed valleys," where it crouched, And shrank, and struggled, like a dragondoubt Glooming a lonely spirit. More finished, to my mind, is the "Storm in the Mountains," where an Australian tropical tempest is described with the conscientious detail of a close student of Nature. Here the bard of the woods is at his best : At length the south sends out her cloudy heaps, And up the glens at noontide dimness creeps ; The birds, late warbling in the hanging green Of steep-set brakes, seek now some safer screen; The herd in doubt no longer wanders wide, But, fast in-gathering, throngs yon mountain side. Whose echoes, surging to its tramt). might seem The muttered troubles of some Titan's dream. Fast the dim legions of the muttering storm Throng denser, or protruding columns form ; "While splashing forward from their cloudy lair, Convolving flames, like scouting dragons, glare.

See in the storm's front, sailing daik and dread, A wide--winged eagle, like a Wack flag spread-! The clouds aloft flash dooml -Short stops his flight; He seems to shrink in the blasting light! The air is shattered with a crashing sonnet, And he falls, stone-like, lifeless, to the ground. - The storm careers^ Girt with black horrors and wide flaming fears! Arriving thunders, mustering on his path, Swell more and more the roaring of his wrath, .fls out in widening circles they extend, And then — at once^ — in utter silence' end. Portentous silence! Time keeps breathing past, Yet it continues .... Terrific vision! Heaven's great ceiling splits, And a vast globe of writhing fire emits, Which, pouring down in one continuous stream, Spans the black concave lik© a burning beam, Or thick through heaven like flaming falchions swarm, Cleaving the teeming cisterns of the storm. The darkness thickens. "With despairing cry From shattering boughs the rain-drenched parrots fly. Loose rocks roll rumbling from the mountains round, And half the forest strews th-e- smoking ground ; To the bared crags the blasts now wilder moan, And the caves labour with a ghostlier groan. The storm is past. Yet booming on afar Is heard the rattling of the thunder-car, And that low, muffled moaning, as of grief, "Which follows with a wood-sigh, -wide and brief — The clouds break up; the sun's forth-bursting rays Clothe the wet landscape with a dazzling blaze.

Few sonnets are haunting : Harpur's are na exception to the rule — not even that tribute to our own waiting epic-germ, to

which he gives the anomalous title of "John Heki." Yet "Greatness" has, or 1 mistake, the true sonnet ring : That man is truly great, and he alone, Who venerates, of present things or past, The absolute only — is the liege of none Save G-od and truth ; who, awed not by this vast And shadowy scheme of life, but anchored In love, and sitting central, like the sun, So gives his mental beams to pierce and run Through all its secrets while his days may last.

But without doubt Harpur's best is the "Witch of Hebron," which even yet ranks among the few long poems of sustained interest Australia has produced. In the "Tower of Dream," the fancy, is pretty, but thin; the "Witch of Hebron" is botU more dignified and more definite, though never reaching the full flood-mark of high tragedy. The tale begins with the Rabbi Joseph's visit to a dying -woman in a. gorgeous palace at Hebron." The woman, a splendid queen of tlie desert, first announces herself as the daughter of a fellow Rabbi : then falls into a paroxysm, during which her spellbound lips repeat the histoiy of her former existences: Five hundred years ago, I, who thus speak, Was an Egyptian of the splendid court Of Ptolemy Philadelphus.

This Egyptian's boundless luxury and ambition brought retribution at last ; but by a double murder and by flight he gratified revenge and escaped, with life alone. Accursed and abandoned, he came To where, amid the dim and level -waste, In frightful loneliness, a mouldered group Of ancient tombs stood ghostly.

Here, in a dismal cell, strewn with human bones, he is tempted by the demon Sammael, in the guise of a decrepit hermit, and readily sells his soul for vengeance and a hundred years of wealth and glory. Nor much it moved me in my eagerness To feel a damp and earthly odour break Out of each tomb, from which there darkling rose At every word a hissing as of snakes.

Returned to Egypt, he became the greatest and worst man in the kingdom, and in his boundless hatred of mankind ■was a very cancer in Africa. But the appearance of Sammael to claim his soul hastened the merciful intervention of a good angel, watching over men of Israelitish blood. His soul is not lost, but allowed a i*>ssible expiation, at first in beast form. First he is a lion, then an eagle. In the last hit- better nature awakes in the blue oi the heavens ; at last he longs to share with humankind his strange aerial joys : To pour the loftier -wonders of my life Into their ears through a, rich-worded song, Whose golden periods in mellow flow Should witch all ears that heard them. Again the form of Sammael appears in an African hurricane, aad again the pitying Son of Paradise intervenes with merciful' siidden death; and the wanderer is now permitted to wear the form of a Circassian girl, who has just died. From this time the soul's course is upward: Again I had some deep-down hold on being, Dim as an oyster's in its ocean-bed. There came a sense of light and air, of space. And all who came to see me and admire Called me Ben Bachai's daughter. When the death of her Arab prince leaves her widowed and defenceless against the greed and insolence of her ungrateful tribe, Sammael again tempts her with boundless wealth, and shows her his slaves : There, down amid the rock-roots of the hills, "What seest thou there? .... The gnomish brood Of IXemogorgon. See them how they moil Amid these diamond shafts and reefs of gold Embedded in the oldest drifts of time. Again she swears away her all but redeemed soul, and looks her last upon the angry Son of Paradise. Wealth, indeed, i* hers, but no longer the faintest illusion of enjoyment ; returned to the birthplace of her last avatar, she essays to give one sign, albeit fruitless, of repentance by refusing the residue of her hundred years, and meeting the pangs of death unsuccoured by Sammael's yet potent ring. And when the awestruck Rabbi has seep her passing, <md returns to his home, his lasti backward look assures him that the beautiful witch's palace has faded away: Only the woods that hung like clouds about Th-e steep 3 of Hebron, in the whitening dawn Lay dark against the sky! The latter half of the poem declines in power. The fall of the man-spirit is comparatively strong and clean-cut in style ; the partial redemption of the woman-spirit nebulous and weak, though perhaps more replete with human interest ; the motive of the second fall is inadequate, moreover. Yet. as a whole, it takes hold of memory, and in its own right secures its creator a certain niche in the Pantheon of Southern art. Harpur left no line to dim his country's record, or darken judgment; if his garland was but a wild spray, from the rock creviceSj it was cool and white In a future paper I 'may be permitted to contrast it with the brilliant exotic wreaths of some modern Australian singers.