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III.—BARRON FIELD'S POEMS

Table of Contents

(1820)

"First Fruits of Australian Poetry"

Sydney, New South Wales. Printed for Private Distribution

I first adventure; follow me who list;

And be the second Austral Harmonist.

Whoever thou art that hast transplanted the British wood-notes to the far-off forest which the Kangaroo haunts—whether thou art some involuntary exile that solaces his sad estrangement with recurrence to his native notes, with more wisdom than those captive Hebrews of old refused to sing their Sion songs in a strange land—or whether, as we rather suspect, thou art that valued friend of ours, who, in thy young time of life, together with thy faithful bride, thy newly "wedded flower," didst, in obedience to the stern voice of duty, quit thy friends, thy family, thy pleasing avocations, the Muses with which thou wert as deeply smitten as any, we believe, in our age and country, to go and administer tedious justice in inauspicious unliterary Thiefland[38]—we reclaim thee for our own, and gladly would transport thee back to thy native "fields," and studies congenial to thy habits.

[38] An elegant periphrasis for the Bay. Mr. Coleridge led us the way—"Cloudland, gorgeous land."

We know a merry Captain, and co-navigator with Cook, who prides himself upon having planted the first pun in Otaheite. It was in their own language, and the islanders first looked at him, then stared at one another, and all at once burst out into a genial laugh. It was a stranger, and as a stranger they gave it welcome. Many a quibble of their own growth, we doubt not, has since sprung from that well-timed exotic. Where puns flourish, there must be no inconsiderable advance in civilization. The same good results we are willing to augur from this dawn of refinement at Sydney. They were beginning to have something like a theatrical establishment there, which we are sorry to hear has been suppressed; for we are of opinion with those who think that a taste for such kind of entertainments is one remove at least from profligacy, and that Shakspeare and Gay may be as safe teachers of morality as the ordinary treatises which assume to instil that science. We have seen one of their play bills (while the thing was permitted to last) and were affected by it in no ordinary degree; particularly in the omission of the titles of honour, which in this country are condescendingly conceded to the players. In their Dramatis Personæ Jobson was played by Smith; Lady Loverule, Jones; Nell, Wilkinson: Gentlemen and Lady Performers alike curtailed of their fair proportions. With a little patronage, we prophesy, that in a very few years the histrionic establishment of Sydney would have risen in respectability; and the humble performers would, by tacit leave, or open permission, have been allowed to use the same encouraging affixes to their names, which dignify their prouder brethren and sisters in the mother country. What a moral advancement, what a lift in the scale, to a Braham or a Stephens of New South Wales, to write themselves Mr. and Miss! The King here has it not in his power to do so much for a Commoner, no, not though he dub him a Duke.

"The First Fruits" consist of two poems. The first celebrates the plant epacris grandiflora; but we are no botanists, and perhaps there is too much matter mixed up in it from the Midsummer Night's Dream, to please some readers. The thefts are indeed so open and palpable, that we almost recur to our first surmise, that the author must be some unfortunate wight, sent on his travels for plagiarisms of a more serious complexion. But the old matter and the new blend kindly together; and must, we hope, have proved right acceptable to more than one

——Among the Fair

Of that young land of Shakspeare's tongue.

We select for our readers the second poem; and are mistaken, if it does not relish of the graceful hyperboles of our elder writers. We can conceive it to have been written by Andrew Marvel, supposing him to have been banished to Botany Bay, as he did, we believe, once meditate a voluntary exile to Bermuda. See his fine poem, "Where the remote Bermudas ride."

* * * *.

"The Kangaroo"

"——mixtumque genus, prolesque biformis."—Virg., Æn., vi.

Kangaroo, Kangaroo!

Thou spirit of Australia,

That redeems from utter failure,

From perfect desolation,

And warrants the creation

Of this fifth part of the earth,

Which would seem an after-birth,

Not conceiv'd in the beginning

(For God bless'd his work at first,

And saw that it was good),

But emerg'd at the first sinning,

When the ground was therefore curst;—

And hence this barren wood!

Kangaroo, Kangaroo!

Tho' at first sight we should say,

In thy nature that there may

Contradiction be involv'd,

Yet, like discord well resolv'd,

It is quickly harmoniz'd.

Sphynx or mermaid realiz'd,

Or centaur unfabulous,

Would scarce be more prodigious,

[Or labyrinthine minotaur

With which great Theseus did war,]

Or Pegasus poetical,

Or hippogriff—chimeras all!

But, what Nature would compile,

Nature knows to reconcile;

And Wisdom, ever at her side,

Of all her children's justified.

She had made the squirrel fragile;

She had made the bounding hart;

But a third so strong and agile

Was beyond ev'n Nature's art.

So she join'd the former two

In thee, Kangaroo!

To describe thee, it is hard:

Converse of the camélopard,

Which beginneth camel-wise,

But endeth of the panther size,

Thy fore half, it would appear,

Had belong'd to "some small deer,"

Such as liveth in a tree;

By thy hinder, thou should'st be

A large animal of chase,

Bounding o'er the forest's space;—

Join'd by some divine mistake,

None but Nature's hand can make—

Nature, in her wisdom's play,

On Creation's holiday.

For howso'er anomalous,

Thou yet art not incongruous,

Repugnant or preposterous.

Better-proportion'd animal,

More graceful or ethereal,

Was never follow'd by the hound,

With fifty steps to thy one bound.

Thou canst not be amended: no;

Be as thou art; thou best art so.

When sooty swans are once more rare,

And duck-moles[39] the museum's care, Be still the glory of this land, Happiest work of finest hand!

[39] The cygnus niger of Juvenal is no rara avis in Australia; and time has here given ample proof of the ornithorynchus paradoxus. [Barron Field's note.]