THE sad fate of Hugh Miller, the accomplished scholar and enthusiast in all relating to the mysteries of Nature, did not strike a deeper chord in the hearts of the sons of Scotland, than did to Victorians a few years since the news of the death of that sportsman, littérateur and poet—Adam Lindsay Gordon. Cut off in an instant, rushing as it were without a care to seek the depths of a mystery of which we know so little, he, a bright star in the firmament of Southern literature, disappeared, leaving many a sympathetic soul mourning the extinction of one of its fairest ornaments. He arrived in South Australia in 1853, and entered the mounted police, where he was known as a smart rider. He represented the Victoria District in the Legislature for two sessions. As a politician, however, he was not very effective, and he has not left on record any measures which he was instrumental in passing. It is solely by his poetical efforts that he will be remembered, for it is beyond dispute that Gordon was the poet of the Australias. No bard on these southern shores (not even Henry Kendall) has struck so bold a chord in poesy; none have equalled and few approached the efforts of his genius. Leaving South Australia he located in Victoria, where he followed pastoral pursuits, and notwithstanding the task of breadwinning, found time to write much and well. His best compositions are "The Lady of Pain," "No Name," "The Ride from the Wreck," "How we beat the Favourite," and the "Sick Stockrider." As the latter is considered the finest of Gordon's compositions we make no apology for quoting it here:—
"Hold hard, Ned! lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade.
Old man, you've had your work cut out to guide
Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed
All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride.
The dawn at 'Moorabinda' was a mist rack dull and dense,
The sunrise was a sullen sluggish lamp;
I was dozing in the gateway at Arbuthnot's boundary fence,
I was dreaming on the Limestone cattle camp.
We crossed the creek at Carricksford, and sharply through the haze.
Quite suddenly the sun shot flaming forth;
To southward lay 'Katâwa' with the sandpeaks all ablaze
And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north.
Now westward winds the bridle path that leads to Lindisfarm,
And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff;
From the far side of the first hill, when the skies are clear and calm.
You can see Sylvester's woolshed fair enough.
Five miles we used to call it from our homestead to the place
Where the big tree spans the roadway like an arch;
'Twas here we ran the dingo down that gave us such a chase
Eight years ago—or was it nine?—last March.
'Twas merry in the glowing morn among the gleaming grass
To wander as we've wandered many a mile,
And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass.
Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while.
'Twas merry 'mid the blackwoods, when we spied the station roofs,
To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard,
With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs;
O! the hardest day was never then too hard!
Aye! we had a glorious gallop after 'Starlight' and his gang,
When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat;
How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, ho^ the flint-strewn ranges rang
To the strokes of 'Mountaineer' and 'Acrobat!'
Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath,
Close beside them through the tea-tree scrub we dashed;
And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath!
And the honeysuckle osiers how they crashed!
We led the hunt throughout, Ned, on the chestnut and the gray,
And the troopers were three hundred yards behind,
While we emptied our six-shooters on the bushrangers at bay,
In the creek with stunted box-trees for a blind!
There you grappled with the leader, man to man and horse to horse.
And you rolled together when the chestnut reared;
He blazed away and missed you in that shallow watercourse—
A narrow shave—his powder singed your beard!
In these hours when life is ebbing, how those days when life was young
Come back to us; how clearly I recall
Even the yams Jack Hall invented, and the songs Jem Boper sung;
And where are now Jem Roper and Jack Hall?
Ay! nearly all our comrades of the old colonial school.
Our ancient boon companions, Ned, are gone;
Hard livers for the most part, somewhat reckless as a rule,
It seems that you and I are left alone.
There was Hughes, who got in trouble through that business with the cards.
It matters little what became of him;
But a steer ripped up MacPherson in the Cooraminta yards.
And Sullivan was drowned at Sink-or-swim;
And Mostyn—poor Frank Mostyn—died at last a fearful wreck.
In "the horrors" at the upper Wandinong,
And Carisbrooke, the rider, at the Horsefall broke his neck;
Faith! the wonder was he saved his neck so long!
Ah! those days and nights we squandered at the Logans' in the Glen—
The Logans, man and wife, have long been dead,
Elsie's tallest girl seems taller than your little Elsie then;
And Ethel is a woman grown and wed.
I've had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil,
And life is short—the longest life a span:
I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil.
Or for the wine that maketh glad the heart of man.
For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain
'Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know—
I should live the same life over, if I had to live again;
And the chances are I go where most men go.
The deep blue sides wax dusky and the tall green trees grow dim,
The sward beneath me seems to heave and fall;
And sickly smoky shadows through the sleepy sunlight swim,
And on the very sun's face weave their pall.
Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave,
With never stone or rail to fence my bed;
Should the sturdy station children pull the bush flowers on my grave,
I may chance to hear them romping overhead."
Since his death imitators of his style, and adapters of some of his ideas have arisen, and among them a Mr. Mowbray Morris, once aide-de-camp to Sir Jas. Fergusson, published, under the title of "A Voice from the Bush," what looked very much like plagiarism of "The Sick Stockrider." This is not the place for a critical review or contrast between the two compositions, but even the late John Howard Clarke was almost deceived in awarding to Mr. Morris the palm justly due to Gordon. In much of the poetry of the latter mysterious forebodings as to an early death appear. In "Doubtful Dreams" he thus alludes to the grim topic—
"There is an end to all things; a season to every man.
Whose glory is dust and ashes, whose spirit is but a spark
That out of the darkness flashes, and flickers out into the dark."
Mr. Gordon was of retiring disposition, and subject to fits of melancholy; he was also strongly imbued with the doctrine of fatality. Death had no terrors for him, and a pistol-shot terminated his existence in June, 1870. He died by his own hand on the sea shore, amid the surroundings of wind and wave, though the motives which led to this rash act have never been made clear; those who saw him an hour before it occurred observed nothing in his demeanour to infer that he contemplated self-destruction. After his decease sundry notices of the talented genius thus lost to the colonies appeared in the press, and among them was an "In Memoriam," by Henry Kendall:—
"At rest! Hard by the margin of that sea
Whose sands are mingled with his noble verse
Now lies the shell which never more shall house
The fine strong spirit of our gifted friend.
Yea! he who flashed upon us suddenly—
A shining soul, with syllables of fire—
Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim
To be their own, the one who did not seem
To know what royal place awaited him
Within the temple of the Beautiful,
Has passed away; and we who knew him sit
Aghast in darkness, dark with that great grief
Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend."
So sad an- ending to a life of promise has probably never before occurred in the colonies. A man who is in want of nothing, and calmly seeks death merely to ascertain what lies beyond its pale, is as great a mystery as the secret he tries to fathom. Little is known of Gordon's early life, but it is said that his father was a military man, and he was an only son. He failed to pass his examination as a cadet at Woolwich, which caused a quarrel with his father, and led to his emigrating to Australia.