The Delphic Voice

It seems that the Australians, more than we have ever done, turn their writers into national monuments. Take for instance their view of Adam Lindsay Gordon, who is revered as a horseman with side-levers, not as the man whopage 227 wrote three good poems – ‘The Ride to the Wreck’, ‘The Sick Stockrider’, ‘The Song of the Surf ’ – and hardly another line that will bear reading. But it doesn’t matter: the national private junk-bag overflows with billies, stock-whips, brooches, heirlooms, and Ned Kelly’s iron pants, all under the euphoric continental sun, lovely simply because they are Australian. Lawson, who had elements of greatness, did not write that way.

It is not Dame Mary Gilmore’s fault that she is described on the dust-jacket of this book as ‘one of those rare personalities who become legendary figures in their own lifetimes’. She is a poet of obvious sincerity, wide sympathies, and a limited talent. Her work has the undiscriminating vigour of primitive literature, that says all it has to say and a little more, never doubting that ethics and poetry are one thing called by two names. There is something of the appalling certainty of a woman, wife and mother, that if the world would take her advice its ‘problems’ would turn out to be a teething colic. Yet at times she comes close to speaking in the voice that might have been hers if she had not tried to sit on the Delphic tripod –

Under a stone
Forever I
Have laid my heart
In pain to lie.

O lichen of
Love’s memory
Cover the stone
And ransom me!

A broad sentimental humour runs through her description of various Australian demi-gods:

Old Forthright had teeth as clean as a hound
And shoulders as strong as a bull;
He had eyes as blue as a midsummer sky,
And a voice like a trumpet, when shouted afar,
But soft and kind as a nesting bird’s
When he spoke to his frail girl-child.

If you see people in that light, you will like this book of poems very well. There are certainly worse ways of looking at the world.

1955 (104)