Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

an AUSTRALIAN POET*
Mr. 0Haras little volume has been
deservedly praised by several o£ the English
critical journals, by whom the writer has
been hailed as a rising Australian poet Yet
there is not much that is distinctively
Australian , in his verse, although.. his
poeihs are based on Australian subjects.
'This is so, we surmise, because, while writing
in Australia, Mr. O'Hara, like ihany more, has
taught himself versification by studying the
classic poets of the old world, and has fallen
into old-world ways of lookitig at the scenes
around, him.Thus in describing harvest
time, in .his'"Corn Song,",he speaks of
autumn tints growing deeper, though it is
only about our gardens and orchards and in
tree-planted streets that one sees much of
the autumn tints ; and this song is sung
over -the wheat-fields in reaping time, which
in Australia is a midsummer event. It is
pleasing to be able to commend Mr. O'Hara's
workmanship. His verses have a melodious
sound, the lines run smoothly, there is
considerable variety of metre and stanza, and
the impression left is as. grateful as the
sound of. running water. How and then
we get a strain that seems familiar to our
ears. The following, for example, in
expression and in alliteration shows that the
writer has been haunted by reminiscences of
Swinburne:—
" There's glory in November,
And lustre on the leaf ;
And over gleaming grasses
The ivind of summer passes,
Wind breaths we'd fain remember
In seasons sick of grief—
There's glory in November,
And lustre on the leaf."
Another piece, entitled. "To Romance,"
smacks somewhat of Poe. Such expressions
as—
" Never clasp the magic maiden,
Happy spirit both of Aidenn."
" Ah! weak mortal,
Hovering over. Hades' portal
In the dying of ^December," I
In those days that now are olden"—
seem to have been inspired by " The Raven."
nevertheless, Mr. O'Hara's poems are not
mere echoes of other writers, though it
cannot be Baid that he has yet
attained to a . distinctive style of his
own, such as is ,to be found in the
best efforts of Kendall, Gordon, and
Brunton Stephens, or of Jennings
Carmichael, whose music is as purely Australian
as the song of the magpie, and as
spontaneous and as artless. -The: weak point of
his, a of so much contemporary,verse, is the
lack of a solid substratum of thought and of
human interest. Fields and fiowers, and the
starry skies and the changing seasons, though
they may be sung of in irreproachable verse,
soon become monotonous, and one longs for
something, even rough and irregular,
if it only contain a touch of passion.
To show that Mr. O'Hara can describe, where
he observes, we conclude by quoting this
passage on a hot-wind day from one of his
longer poems
" All day the fiery summer heat
Upon the blackened ranges beat;
All day the furnace North wind blew,
A wind of death the forest through ;
All day the smoke of rushing fires
Hid the low ranged distant spires,
And filled the valley-lands with dun
Clouds, hiding all the light of day
And wrapping in their folds away
The red disk of the angiy sun.
But hark, the South wind! and a change
Blew its loud trumpets on the range;
And all the hills took heart and flung
Aside the curtains day bad hung
Above their sleep; but darker grew
The skv, like sorrow bent o'er pain ;
And the glad welcome of the rein
Out of the cloudy bastions blew."
The observation in regard to the effects of
teat is close and accurate ; but Mr. O'Hara
falls off when he comes to the south wind,
and if, instead of bringing in the trumpet, he
had suggested a rushing movement through the
trees, and the feeling of coolness which one
mmediately thinks of when the south wind
is mentioned, we should have liked the de
scription better. The extract bears out what
we have stud above as to the influence that
old-world models have had on this young
writer. The wind often trumpets in classic
poetry, but the comparison is not one which
would naturally occur to the Australian, who
seldom hears trumpets.
$