The Poems of Henry Kendall
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Henry Kendall >> The Poems of Henry Kendall
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22 This etext was typed and proofread (proofread twice --
with a large interval) by Alan R. Light (alight@mercury.interpath.net).
This was done very carefully so as to assure a clean, accurate copy.
The Poems of Henry Kendall
by Henry Kendall [Native-born Australian Poet -- 1841-1882.]
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases will be marked by tildes (~).
Lines longer than 78 characters have been broken according to metre,
and the continuation is indented two spaces. A few obvious errors
have been corrected.]
This edition of Kendall contains: (i) The poems included in
the three volumes published during the author's lifetime;
(ii) Those not reprinted by Kendall, but included in the collected editions
of 1886, 1890 and 1903; (iii) Early pieces not hitherto reprinted;
(iv) Poems, now first printed, from the Kendall MSS. in the Mitchell Library,
the use of which has been kindly permitted by the Trustees.
Certain topical skits and other pieces of no value have been omitted.
The Poems of Henry Kendall
With biographical note by Bertram Stevens
Contents
Poems and Songs
The Muse of Australia
Mountains
Kiama
Etheline
Aileen
Kooroora
Fainting by the Way
Song of the Cattle-Hunters
Footfalls
God Help Our Men at Sea
Sitting by the Fire
Bellambi's Maid
The Curlew Song
The Ballad of Tanna
The Rain Comes Sobbing to the Door
Urara
Evening Hymn
Stanzas
The Wail in the Native Oak
Harps We Love
Waiting and Wishing
The Wild Kangaroo
Clari
Wollongong
Ella with the Shining Hair
The Barcoo
Bells Beyond the Forest
Ulmarra
The Maid of Gerringong
Watching
The Opossum-Hunters
In the Depths of a Forest
To Charles Harpur
The River and the Hill
The Fate of the Explorers
Lurline
Under the Figtree
Drowned at Sea
Morning in the Bush
The Girl I Left Behind Me
Amongst the Roses
Sunset
Doubting
Geraldine
Achan
Leaves from Australian Forests
Dedication
Prefatory Sonnets
The Hut by the Black Swamp
September in Australia
Ghost Glen
Daphne
The Warrigal
Euroclydon
Araluen
At Euroma
Illa Creek
Moss on a Wall
Campaspe
On a Cattle Track
To Damascus
Bell-Birds
A Death in the Bush
A Spanish Love Song
The Last of His Tribe
Arakoon
The Voyage of Telegonus
Sitting by the Fire
Cleone
Charles Harpur
Coogee
Ogyges
By the Sea
King Saul at Gilboa
In the Valley
Twelve Sonnets --
A Mountain Spring
Laura
By a River
Attila
A Reward
To ----
The Stanza of Childe Harold
A Living Poet
Dante and Virgil
Rest
After Parting
Alfred Tennyson
Sutherland's Grave
Syrinx
On the Paroo
Faith in God
Mountain Moss
The Glen of Arrawatta
Euterpe
Ellen Ray
At Dusk
Safi
Daniel Henry Deniehy
Merope
After the Hunt
Rose Lorraine
Songs from the Mountains
To a Mountain
Mary Rivers
Kingsborough
Beyond Kerguelen
Black Lizzie
Hy-Brasil
Jim the Splitter
Mooni
Pytheas
Bill the Bullock-Driver
Cooranbean
When Underneath the Brown Dead Grass
The Voice in the Wild Oak
Billy Vickers
Persia
Lilith
Bob
Peter the Piccaninny
Narrara Creek
In Memory of John Fairfax
Araluen
The Sydney International Exhibition
Christmas Creek
Orara
The Curse of Mother Flood
On a Spanish Cathedral
Rover
The Melbourne International Exhibition
By the Cliffs of the Sea
Galatea
Black Kate
A Hyde Park Larrikin
Names Upon a Stone
Leichhardt
After Many Years
Early Poems, 1859-70
The Merchant Ship
Oh, Tell Me, Ye Breezes
The Far Future
Silent Tears
Extempore Lines
The Old Year
Tanna
The Earth Laments for Day
The Late W. V. Wild, Esq.
Astarte
Australian War Song
The Ivy on the Wall
The Australian Emigrant
To My Brother, Basil E. Kendall
The Waterfall
The Song of Arda
The Helmsman
To Miss Annie Hopkins
Foreshadowings
Sonnets on the Discovery of Botany Bay by Captain Cook
To Henry Halloran
Lost in the Flood
Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Four
To ----
At Long Bay
For Ever
Sonnets
The Bereaved One
Dungog
Deniehy's Lament
Deniehy's Dream
Cui Bono?
In Hyde Park
Australia Vindex
Ned the Larrikin
~In Memoriam~ -- Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse
Rizpah
Kiama Revisited
Passing Away
James Lionel Michael
Elijah
Manasseh
Caroline Chisholm
Mount Erebus
Our Jack
Camped by the Creek
Euterpe
Sedan
Other Poems, 1871-82
Adam Lindsay Gordon
In Memory of Edward Butler
How the Melbourne Cup was Won
Blue Mountain Pioneers
Robert Parkes
At Her Window
William Bede Dalley
To the Spirit of Music
John Dunmore Lang
On a Baby Buried by the Hawkesbury
Song of the Shingle-Splitters
On a Street
Heath from the Highlands
The Austral Months
Aboriginal Death-Song
Sydney Harbour
A Birthday Trifle
Frank Denz
Sydney Exhibition Cantata
Hymn of Praise
Basil Moss
Hunted Down
Wamberal
~In Memoriam~ -- Alice Fane Gunn Stenhouse
From the Forests
John Bede Polding
Outre Mer
Biographical Note
Henry Kendall was the first Australian poet to draw his inspiration
from the life, scenery and traditions of the country. In the beginnings
of Australian poetry the names of two other men stand with his --
Adam Lindsay Gordon, of English parentage and education,
and Charles Harpur, born in Australia a generation earlier than Kendall.
Harpur's work, though lacking vitality, shows fitful gleams of poetic fire
suggestive of greater achievement had the circumstances of his life
been more favourable. Kendall, whose lot was scarcely more fortunate,
is a true singer; his songs remain, and are likely long to remain,
attractive to poetry lovers.
The poet's grandfather, Thomas Kendall, a Lincolnshire schoolmaster,
met the Revd. Samuel Marsden when the latter was in England
seeking assistants for his projected missionary work in New Zealand.
Kendall offered his services to the Church Missionary Society of London
and came out to Sydney in 1809. Five years later he was sent
to the Bay of Islands as a lay missionary, holding also
the first magistrate's commission issued for New Zealand.
He soon made friends with the Maoris and learnt their language well enough
to compile a primer in pidgin-Maori, `A Korao no New Zealand; or,
the New Zealander's First Book', which George Howe printed for Marsden
at Sydney in 1815. In 1820 Thomas Kendall went to England
with some Maori chiefs, and while there helped Professor Lee, of Cambridge,
to "fix" the Maori language -- the outcome of their work being
Lee and Kendall's `Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand',
published in the same year.
Returning to New Zealand, Kendall, in 1823, left the Missionary Society
and went with his son Basil to Chile. In 1826 he came back to Australia,
and for his good work as a missionary received from
the New South Wales Government a grant of 1280 acres at Ulladulla,
on the South Coast. There he entered the timber trade and became
owner and master of a small vessel used in the business. About 1832
this vessel was wrecked near Sydney, and all on board, including the owner,
were drowned.
Of Basil Kendall's early career little is known. While in South America
he saw service under Lord Cochrane, the famous tenth Earl of Dundonald,
who, after five brilliant years in the Chilean service, was,
between 1823 and 1825, fighting on behalf of Brazil. Basil returned
to Australia, but disappears from view until 1840. One day in that year
he met a Miss Melinda McNally, and next day they were married.
Soon afterwards they settled on the Ulladulla grant,
farming land at Kirmington, two miles from the little town of Milton.
There, in a primitive cottage Basil had built, twin sons --
Basil Edward and Henry -- were born on the 18th April, 1841.
Five years later the family moved to the Clarence River district
and settled near the Orara. Basil Kendall had practically lost one lung
before his marriage, and failing health made it exceedingly difficult
for him to support his family, to which by this time three daughters
had been added. On the Orara he grew steadily weaker, and died somewhere
about 1851.
Basil Kendall was well educated, and had done what he could to educate
his children. After his death the family was scattered, and the two boys
were sent to a relative on the South Coast. The scenery of this district
made a profound impression upon Henry, and is often referred to
in his early poems. In 1855 his uncle Joseph took him as cabin boy
in his brig, the `Plumstead', for a two years' cruise in the Pacific,
during which they touched at many of the Islands and voyaged as far north
as Yokohama. The beauty of the scenes he visited lived
in the boy's memory, but the rigours of ship life were so severe
that in after years he looked back on the voyage with horror.
Henry Kendall returned to Sydney in March, 1857, and at once
obtained employment in the city and set about making a home for
his mother and sisters. Mrs. Kendall, granddaughter of Leonard McNally,
a Dublin notable of his day, was a clever, handsome woman
with a strong constitution and a volatile temperament.
Henry was always devoted to her, and considered that from her
he inherited whatever talent he possessed. She helped in his education,
and encouraged him to write verse.
The first verses of his known to have been printed were
"O tell me, ye breezes" -- signed "H. Kendall" -- which appeared in
`The Australian Home Companion and Band of Hope Journal' in 1859.
A number of other poems by Kendall appeared in the same magazine
during 1860 and 1861. But in a letter written years afterwards
to Mr. Sheridan Moore, Kendall says "My first essay in writing was sent to
`The Southern Cross' at the time you were sub-editor. You, of course,
lit your pipe with it. It was on the subject of the `Dunbar'.
After a few more attempts in prose and verse -- attempts only remarkable
for their being clever imitations -- I hit upon the right vein and wrote
the Curlew Song. Then followed the crude, but sometimes happy verses
which made up my first volume."
The verses on the wreck of the `Dunbar', written at the age of sixteen,
were eventually printed in `The Empire' in 1860 as "The Merchant Ship".
Henry Parkes, the editor of that newspaper, had already welcomed
some of the boy's poems, and in `The Empire' of the 8th December, 1859,
had noticed as just published a song -- "Silent Tears" --
the words of which were written by "a young native poet, Mr. H. Kendall,
N.A.P." These initials, which puzzled Parkes, as well they might,
meant no more than Native Australian Poet.
Kendall also sent some poems to `The Sydney Morning Herald';
there they attracted the attention of Henry Halloran, a civil servant
and a voluminous amateur writer, who sought out the poet
and tried to help him.
Kendall's mother brought him to Mr. Sheridan Moore, who had some reputation
as a literary critic. He was greatly interested in the poems, and promised
to try to raise money for their publication. Subscriptions were invited
by advertisement in January, 1861, but came in so slowly that,
after a year's delay, Kendall almost despaired of publication.
Meanwhile Moore had introduced Kendall to James Lionel Michael,
through whom he came to know Nicol D. Stenhouse, Dr. Woolley, and others
of the small group of literary men in Sydney. Michael, a London solicitor,
had been a friend of some of the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists,
and was much more interested in literature than in the law
when the lure of gold brought him to Australia in 1853.
Himself a well-read man and a writer of very fair verse, he recognized
the decided promise of Kendall's work and gave him a place in his office.
In spite of their disparity in years they became friends,
and Kendall undoubtedly derived great benefit from Michael's influence
and from the use of his library. When in 1861 Michael left Sydney
for Grafton, Kendall either accompanied him or joined him soon afterwards.
He did not, however, stay long at Grafton. He found employment at Dungog
on the Williams River; afterwards went to Scone, where he worked
for a month or two, and then made his way back to Sydney.
Restive over the long delay in publication, and anxious to get
a critical estimate of his work, Kendall in January, 1862, made copies
of some pieces and sent them to the `Cornhill Magazine' with a letter
pleading for special consideration on account of the author's youth
and the indifference of Australians to anything produced
in their own country. A reduced facsimile of this interesting letter
is printed here. {In this etext, the letter has been transcribed
and is included at the end of this section.} Thackeray was editor
of `Cornhill' up to April, 1862, but may not have seen this pathetic appeal
from the other side of the world. At any rate, no notice of it was taken
by `Cornhill', and in July of the same year Kendall sent a similar letter
with copies of his verses to the `Athenaeum'. The editor printed
the letter and some of the poems, with very kindly comments,
in the issue of 27th September, 1862.
In October, 1862, before this powerful encouragement reached
the young writer, `Poems and Songs' was published in Sydney
by Mr. J. R. Clarke. `The Empire' published a favourable review.
Further notice of his work appeared in the `Athenaeum' during
the next four years, and in 1866 it was generously praised
by Mr. G. B. Barton in his `Poets and Prose Writers of New South Wales'.
Meanwhile in August, 1863, Kendall was, through Parkes' influence,
appointed to a clerkship in the Surveyor-General's Department
at one hundred and fifty pounds a year, and three years later
was transferred to the Colonial Secretary's Office at two hundred pounds
a year. During this period he read extensively, and wrote much verse.
By 1867 he had so far overcome his natural shyness that he undertook
to deliver a series of lectures at the Sydney School of Arts.
One of these, on "Love, Courtship and Marriage", precipitated him
into experience of all three; for he walked home after the lecture
with Miss Charlotte Rutter, daughter of a Government medical officer,
straightway fell in love, and, after a brief courtship, they were married
in the following year.
The year 1868 was a memorable one for Kendall in other ways. In April,
James Lionel Michael was found dead in the Clarence River, and in June
Charles Harpur died at Euroma. Kendall had a great admiration
for Harpur's poems and wrote to him in the spirit of a disciple.
They corresponded for some years, but did not meet until a few months
before the elder poet's death. Kendall describes Harpur
as then "a noble ruin -- scorched and wasted by the fire of sorrow."
In 1868, also, a prize was offered in Melbourne for
the best Australian poem, the judge being Richard Hengist Horne,
author of `Orion'. Kendall sent in three poems and Horne
awarded the prize to "A Death in the Bush". In an article printed
in Melbourne and Sydney newspapers he declared that the author
was a true poet, and that had there been three prizes,
the second and third would have gone to Kendall's other poems --
"The Glen of Arrawatta" and "Dungog".
The result of winning this prize was that Kendall decided to
abandon routine work and try to earn his living as a writer.
He resigned his position in the Colonial Secretary's Office
on the 31st March, 1869, and shortly afterwards left for Melbourne,
where his wife and daughter soon joined him. Melbourne was then
a centre of greater literary activity than Sydney. Neither then, however,
nor for a long time to come, was any number of people in Australia
sufficiently interested in local literature (apart from journalism)
to warrant the most gifted writer in depending upon his pen for support.
Still, Kendall managed to persuade Mr. George Robertson,
the principal Australian bookseller of those days, to undertake the risk
of his second book of poems -- `Leaves from Australian Forests' --
which was published towards the end of 1869. But though the volume
showed a great advance in quality upon its predecessor,
it was a commercial failure, and the publisher lost ninety pounds over it.
In Melbourne, Kendall wrote prose, as well as satirical and serious verse,
for most of the papers. The payment was small; in fact,
only a few newspapers then paid anything for verse. He made a little money
by writing the words for a cantata, "Euterpe", sung at the opening of
the Melbourne Town Hall in 1870. At the office of `The Colonial Monthly',
edited by Marcus Clarke, he met the best of the Melbourne literati,
and, though his reserved manner did not encourage intimacy,
one of them -- George Gordon McCrae -- became a close and true friend.
Lindsay Gordon, too, admired Kendall's poems, and learned to respect
a man whose disposition was in some ways like his own.
`Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes' appeared in June, 1870,
and Kendall received an advance copy and wrote a laudatory review
for `The Australasian'. He and Gordon spent some hours
on the day of publication, discussing the book and poetry in general.
Both were depressed by the apparent futility of literary effort
in Australia, where nearly everyone was making haste to be rich.
Next morning Gordon shot himself -- tired of life at thirty-seven!
Kendall knew how Harpur's last long illness had been saddened
by the knowledge that the public was utterly indifferent to his poems;
he had seen the wreck of the once brilliant Deniehy;
and now the noble-hearted Gordon had given up the struggle.
To these depressing influences, and the hardships occasioned by
a meagre and uncertain income, was added a new grief -- the loss of
his first-born, Araluen, whose memory he enshrined years afterwards
in a poem of pathetic tenderness. He returned to Sydney early in 1871,
broken in health and spirit. The next two years were a time of tribulation,
during which, as he said later on, he passed into the shadow,
and emerged only through the devotion of his wife and the help
of the brothers Fagan, timber merchants, of Brisbane Water.
Kendall was the Fagans' guest at Narrara Creek, near Gosford,
and afterwards filled a clerical position in the business
which one of the brothers established at Camden Haven.
There he spent seven tranquil years with his wife and family,
and wrote the best of his poems. In some of these he said
all that need be said against himself, for he was always frankly critical
of his conduct and work.
In his later years Kendall tasted some of the sweets of success.
He wrote the words of the opening Cantata sung at
the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879, and won a prize
of one hundred pounds offered by `The Sydney Morning Herald' for a poem
on the Exhibition. His third collection -- `Songs from the Mountains' --
was published at Sydney in 1880, and realized a substantial profit.
In 1881 Sir Henry Parkes made a position for him, an Inspectorship
of State Forests at five hundred pounds a year. Kendall's experience
in the timber business well fitted him for this, though his health
was not equal to the exposure attendant on the work. He moved
to Cundletown, on the Manning River, before receiving the appointment,
and from that centre rode out on long tours of inspection.
During one of these he caught a chill; his lungs were affected,
and rapid consumption followed. He went to Sydney for treatment
and was joined by his wife at Mr. Fagan's house in Redfern,
where he died in her arms on the 1st August, 1882.
He was buried at Waverley, overlooking the sea.
Kendall, it should be remembered, did not prepare a collected edition
of his poems, and it will be noticed that in the present volume
some lines and passages appear more than once. The student and lover
of Kendall will be interested to see how these lines and passages
were taken from his own previous work and turned to better account
in later poems, and to note the gradual improvement of his style.
In his last book, `Songs from the Mountains', there are fewer echoes;
the touch is surer, and the imaginative level at his highest.
The shining wonder is that, under the conditions of Australian life
between 1860 and 1880, he should have written so much that is so good.
As our first sweet singer of "native woodnotes wild",
Kendall has an enduring place in the regard of all Australians;
and his best work is known and admired wherever English poetry is read.
Bertram Stevens
{This is the transcription of the letter previously mentioned.}
Newtown, Sydney, New South Wales.
January 21, 1862
To the Editor of the "Cornhill Magazine".
Sir,
Will you oblige me by reading this letter, and the accompanying verses?
Remember that they will have travelled sixteen thousand miles,
and on that account will be surely worth a few moments of your time.
I think that there is merit in the verses, and have sent them to you,
hoping that you -- yourself, will be of the same opinion. If one
can be selected -- one up to the standard of the `Cornhill Magazine',
insert it, and you will be helping me practically. I do not hint
of pecuniary remuneration however, for your recognition would be
sufficient reward.
Let me say a few words about myself: I was born in this colony; and am now
in the nineteenth year of my age. My education has been neglected --
hence you will very likely find that some of these effusions are immature.
At present the most of my time is occupied at an attorney's office,
but I do not earn enough there to cover expenses; considering that
I have to support my mother and three sisters. I want to rise,
and if my poems are anywhere near the mark you can assist me
by noticing them.
They recognise me in this country as the "first Australian poet".
If the men who load me with their fulsome, foolish praises, really believed
{that I have talent (crossed out)} in my talents, and cared a whit
about fostering a native literature, they would give me a good situation;
and I should not have to appeal to you.
If one of the poems is found to be good enough, and you publish it,
someone here will _then_ surely do the rest. On the other hand
if nothing can be gleaned from them, let the effusions and their author
be forgotten. Hoping that you will not forget to read the verses,
I remain
Yours, Respectfully, H. Kendall.
Poems and Songs
The Muse of Australia
Where the pines with the eagles are nestled in rifts,
And the torrent leaps down to the surges,
I have followed her, clambering over the clifts,
By the chasms and moon-haunted verges.
I know she is fair as the angels are fair,
For have I not caught a faint glimpse of her there;
A glimpse of her face and her glittering hair,
And a hand with the Harp of Australia?
I never can reach you, to hear the sweet voice
So full with the music of fountains!
Oh! when will you meet with that soul of your choice,
Who will lead you down here from the mountains?
A lyre-bird lit on a shimmering space;
It dazzled mine eyes and I turned from the place,
And wept in the dark for a glorious face,
And a hand with the Harp of Australia!
Mountains
Rifted mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines,
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines;
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air;
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud,
Where the fading twilight lingers, when the winds are wailing loud;
Grand old mountains, overbeetling brawling brooks and deep ravines,
Where the moonshine, pale and mournful, flows on rocks and evergreens.
Underneath these regal ridges -- underneath the gnarly trees,
I am sitting, lonely-hearted, listening to a lonely breeze!
Sitting by an ancient casement, casting many a longing look
Out across the hazy gloaming -- out beyond the brawling brook!
Over pathways leading skyward -- over crag and swelling cone,
Past long hillocks looking like to waves of ocean turned to stone;
Yearning for a bliss unworldly, yearning for a brighter change,
Yearning for the mystic Aidenn, built beyond this mountain range.
Happy years, amongst these valleys, happy years have come and gone,
And my youthful hopes and friendships withered with them one by one;
Days and moments bearing onward many a bright and beauteous dream,
All have passed me like to sunstreaks flying down a distant stream.
Oh, the love returned by loved ones! Oh, the faces that I knew!
Oh, the wrecks of fond affection! Oh, the hearts so warm and true!
But their voices I remember, and a something lingers still,
Like a dying echo roaming sadly round a far off hill.
I would sojourn here contented, tranquil as I was of yore,
And would never wish to clamber, seeking for an unknown shore;
I have dwelt within this cottage twenty summers, and mine eyes
Never wandered erewhile round in search of undiscovered skies;
But a spirit sits beside me, veiled in robes of dazzling white,
And a dear one's whisper wakens with the symphonies of night;
And a low sad music cometh, borne along on windy wings,
Like a strain familiar rising from a maze of slumbering springs.
And the Spirit, by my window, speaketh to my restless soul,
Telling of the clime she came from, where the silent moments roll;
Telling of the bourne mysterious, where the sunny summers flee
Cliffs and coasts, by man untrodden, ridging round a shipless sea.
There the years of yore are blooming -- there departed life-dreams dwell,
There the faces beam with gladness that I loved in youth so well;
There the songs of childhood travel, over wave-worn steep and strand --
Over dale and upland stretching out behind this mountain land.
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