JOINING THE IMMORTALS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19804, 21 May 1934, Page 8

JOINING THE IMMORTALS.

Sixty-four years have passed since on a grey winter’s morning Adam Lindsay Gordon was found lying dead in the scrub near Brighton, Victoria. In a fit of inherited melancholia he had taken his life. For more than half a century the people of Australia have acknowledged Gordon as much the poet of Australia as Burns is of Scotland. But Gordon had not come into his kingdom until within the past week when impressive ceremonials marked his admission to the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Although the first of Australian poets passed into the Great Beyond just as the light of literary fame had begun to shine through the dark clouds of poverty and neglect, that fame has extended with each passing year, until Gordon is now the best known, if not always acknowledged as the greatest, poet Australia has produced. No other poet has sung himself so. com

pletely into the hearts of the Australian people. Many have been inspired by his qualities, but all acknowledge him master. Abhorrence for the deed which ended his existence is lost in pity for and sympathy with the man. To one so constituted there were things far worse than death. Obsessed by cares which to a more robust mentality might have appeared slight, the poet’s mind in his last years turned constantly to the contemplation of death. He had grown

So weary, with long sandsifting; , T’wards the mist where the breakers

moan The rudderless barque is drifting. Through the shoals and the quicksand

shifting— In the end shall the night rack lifting Discover the shores unknown?

But Gordon could draw inspira tion from the open air; indeed

one of his critics lias said of him that “the lasting charm and value of liis best verse are due to his manly love of the open air, of sport, of ‘playing the game.’ ” This inspired many of his most vigorous lines; indeed it was Gordon who wrote:

We have no wish to exaggerate The worth of the sports we prize, Some toil for their church, and some for their State, And some for their merchandise; Some traffic and trade in the city’s mart, Some travel by land and sea Some follow science, some cleve to art, And some to scandal and tea; And some for their country and their Queen Would fight, if chance they had Good! sooth! ’twere a sorry world, I ween. If we all went galloping mad; Yet if once we efface the joys of the chase From the land, and out-root the stud, Good-bye to the Anglo-Saxon race! Farewell to the Norman blood! Far more than to success on the turf Gordon aspired to win poetic fame, and his later literary efforts won him some renown. But despite plenty of exercise, however, his inherited melancholia, combined probably with the effects of liis injuries at Ballarat and another severe fail at Melbourne, grew upon him and was mainly responsible for the rash act by which he ended his life; The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps The splendid fire of English chivalry From dying out; the one who never wronged

A fellow man . . . the brave great soul That never told a lie, or turned aside To fly from danger.

Such is Henry Kendall’s tribute to his friend. And with no wish to exaggerate his good qualities, or hide his blemishes, that is the impression—a nobleness of character and straightforwardness of living—received from the plain record of Gordon’s life, and supported by the testimony of those who knew him best. Of Gordon, one of his disciples wrote: This was the poet that loved God’s breath, His life was a passionate quest; He looked down deep in the wells of death, And now he has taken his rest. It is not in Gordon’s despairing philosophy that he is best remembered, and it is not, however, to such passages that we turn to the keynote to the poet’s work and character. Rather is that to be found in the manly, hopeful sentiments at the conclusion of “Ye Wearie Wayfarer,” without which any tribute to Adam Lindsay Gordon would be uncompleted: Question not, but live and labour Till yon goal be won; Helping every feeble neighbour, „ Seeking help from none. Life is mostly froth and bubble Two things stand like stone— Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own. Courage, comrades, this is certain All is for the best — There are lights behind the curtain — Brothers, let us rest. Universal recognition of Gordon’s peculiar merits has found expression in the memorial placed in the Abbey, and contemporary history will endorse the view of the disciples of Gordon who say that the lines quoted above reveal the true spirit of Australia’s greatest poet.