AN AUSTRALIAN POET OF 10-DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2676, 28 June 1905, Page 72

AN AUSTRALIAN POET OF 10-DAY.

By Jessie Mackay, 11.

Yet Bernard O'Dowd is such a man as Slate and Church must reckon with, and reckon with in his own com. For the modem wallet of promises, as for the medieval wallet' of paidons, he has tho burning seem of a man whose own life has been a stern and strenuous struggle upward against odds; a life "packed with effort- more than fancy. A Victorian born, of Irish origin, he is still under 40. . He early showed peculiar aptitude for study, and^ though interrupted in his academic couise i'or rome years by untoward circumstances, he was still young when he graduated in Victoria, taking honours iii philosophy. About the same time he married Miss Evangeline Fryer. He was afterwards admitted to the Bar, and is now arsistant librarian of the Supreme Court, Melbourne. The aim and spirit whicn dominate his lifo is best described iv the personal note by Mr A. Q. Stephens, accompanying his booklet in the Bulletin series : —

"O'Dowd is made of the stuff of prophets and martyrs. His early manhood was a period of mental turbulence, in which hereditary and religious forces encountered the shock of the modem spirit, and were diverted from creed and ceremonial into paths of social self-sacrifice and democratic struggle. To his active, earliest, ascetic mind no knowledge came amiss. He was at once learner and teacher, studying law, history, and religion ; interested in spiritualism, socialism, communism, anarchism, and mysticism ; and holding fervent Sunday classes in all manner of subjects from poetry to ethics. As writer and lecturer, he" dabbled in politics, compiled a secularist service bcok called the 'Lyceum Tutor,' supported the Labour movement, spoke for Australian independence, helped to found the 'Toscin,' penned verses and articles, corresponded with Whitman, and edited law books."'

This is a stamp of man not to be handled advantageously by either kid-glove politicians or kid-glove Chiistians. He has not sinned the unforgivable sin according to Browning; he is guiltless of "the unlit. I'imp and the ungirt loin." With himself, that sin is only second to tho absolute inirpaity of acquiescence in any form of thought, energy, or belief outside the secular fold of extreme Socialism. In his battle with all that is he cannot but strike ehoid after chord in every fighting soul. What whole-hearted and manly scorn of venal and vitiated art flashes broadcast in "A Poet of the Moment" : — But duty will not villas buy, Or Conscience cosy robes; Nor is there any reason why All poets should be Jobs. AD Art ia Art, since it delights, And so, with earless lilt, To soothe "Remorse's moody nighu I sing the -joys of Guilt.

But surely even in Australia there must bi> sonic exceptions to the sweeping picture of modtrn journalism conveyed in "The Picss."' That Mr O'Dowd has seen good reason for his specific chaigc-3 in this conr>cct icr. no one will deny ; but the demuicicitions of ihe prophet of Demos mrsi i ceds lecoil like a boomerang. For a, rcud volcano tluows up liquid piuity compared the Austiflian fountnin of democratic journalism Thus, in cri«-p and telling lir.es, does "The Press' 1 exi>ound Lcrself : — I syl abe the thoughts of those YVho bow the ki^ee to me, Jp cveiy wilderness wheie grows F.i:-'own democivcy. My crucible with shiewd assay To statesmanslup lefines What docile lightnings haul each day From crude opinion's mines. I teach the people what is good Foi them and for— my purse; If vice will aid my livelihood, Thea viitue has my curse For scores that Clcous could befog, I can o, million sway; I am the modern Demagogue, In modern Mammon's pay. The poet has seen that whereof lie speaks But is the va&t aggregate sixpence of prurient Demos one whit cleaner than tup plump tribe of his sleek brct-toer Dives T The poet cf high fantacy may run with the hare and hunt, with the hounds if ho will ; but the prophet is sworn to consistency or death. God's in His heaven ; All's well with the woild. So &an,g sweet Pippa, and every pessimist has hated her and Browning for the wordever sinee — aye, and more than a few single-hearted" warriors for truth have found it a hard saying. „But it has never been given a flatter denial than in Mr O'Dowd's "Prosperity." If the poem had been called "Privilege" every line would stand ; as it is, human nature recoils at the superhuman task of repentance set by the modem .Jonah to the modern Ninevah. The young lamb plays in the meadow, the young leaf stirs on the tree, ths seventh wave crowns the inrolling sea ; but till the last earthly wrong is righted Übn must stop ear and eye against the gladness of living ' And' j'eb here tie prophet of demociacy is right after the manner of his vision. For, if Dives or Demos, or both together, be the god of this tangled world, it i& but fair and fitting that he should never smile again, seeing that he cannot build faster with one hand than he Is pulling down with the other. "" So, let him neitner own nor rejodes on the earth that he could not make, yet has aheady marred. Fiom this standpoint Prosperity as such may truly say : 'Who Teaches me a stream must ford, 'Wholse poppied waters dim Old dreams of weilciing Freedom's sword, And chanting Freedom's hymn; Must bold the claims of Discontent, Mere envies of the mass ; That Life's lepose was only meant To dower the ruling class ; Must learn that Nature weakness scorns, That God the serfs ignores, That Toil deserves its crown of thorns, And poverty its sores ; That tho' 'tis wise with Charity Torrential Need to darn, i The hope of progress is a lie, And brotherhood a sham. In the whole poem there is not a line to show that the crime of possession is, or oan bo, palliated by the possessor's Ynoral attitude towards his fellows We are not shown that tho poet has even the power to differentiate between the greediest sweater in Chicago and' the Oadbiuys, whose model 'Christian factory town is an object-lesson in jjjplitical economy. Mr O'Dowd is a deeply-read man. Has it ever struck lum that these radical views on property place him on, the same plane as the Gragiers and Pillar Saints, whose asce-tie vagaries y-ea - e an excrescence on Christianity 1500 years ago? ' Nay, does he iut go further than that, and hark back to the primeval idea of sacrifice, ! whereby man, ever unwilling to whip hi;u- j self when a substitute can be found, holds ] out the sin-bearing goat t.o offended' , heaven? Does the new democracy indeed transfer the guilt of the world wholesale ! from its souT to its houses, flocks, and money? If so, why seek by redistribrrtion to spread the cancer of a thing inherently evil? Or is it that the world has been born into twu classes — Dives the black who has. and Demos the white who has not? If the initial mistake of Piovidence can be rectified, and the wealth of Dives the black be transferred to the infallible guidance of Demos ths white, all will be well. Then, nlso. must democracy fix the j net income which is tho abyss between Dives the block and' Demos the white. Herein lies the reductio ad absurdiun to which, in my humble opinion, the prophet of the new democracy brings vs — no worse .a reductio ad absurdum, certainly, than Ronsseau, the sentimental hater of caste, ] and leader of an earlier secular democracy, brought France to in the harvest time of his "Reign of Rpason." Piers Plowman \ was wiser th/m either in his teaching that Being j>nd Doing Sorm the eternal crux, having being a mere circumstance.

It is this determined ignoring of man's spiritual evolution and spiritual necessities, this oft-repeated attempt to build the New Jerusalem with their own sun-dried bricks, that is the tragedy of Mr O"Dowd and his school Were they not really bowed under the fearful burden of the Troild's woe, there would be no tragedy. Were they really touching the problems of colour, caste, poverty, vice, as Livingstone, Or Barnardo, and General Booth hays touched them, there would be no tragedy. One .-Tare not say that any earnest leader of thought absolutely beats the air; yet, &o far as can be guaged by any visible test, the results of the democratic gospel of Hate fully i'i>tify the more or less veiled pessimism of its prophets.

(To be continued.)

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