XI
THREE WRITERS OF VERSE
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music, too.
Yes, we have our own music: and it is not all thin in quality, nor is it all played upon a single string. A rare value, a special distinction attach to the achievements in verse of Victor Daley, who is one of the latest to join the great company of poets in the shades. He did his work for a people who were somewhat indifferent and who, when they appreciated, showed their appreciation in no very practical way. And now, when he is
Far too far for words or wings to follow,
Far too far off for thought or any prayer,
these fitfully poetical, but wholly good-hearted people of the continent in which he lived are inclined to regret him. It is a regret that does them credit, though it can be tempered with some reflections of a more satisfying kind. For Daley was honoured probably as much as—perhaps more than—most poets are by their contemporaries. It is possible to believe that in the long twilight which preceded his earthly eclipse, he believed that he had given lasting shape and form to some of the more beautiful, more intangible things of life, and found sufficient consolation in the belief. There is not a great deal to be said about the life history of Victor Daley. Some one of those who rhymed with him, drank with him, joked with him, or sat up all night quoting verses with him may yet write his biography. But it will not be a startling or an eventful document. He was of Irish parentage and came to Australia—unless a statement made by one of his most intimate friends is erroneous—when nearly out of his teens. He drifted into journalism, as many men of restless temperament and uncommercial principles do. He wrote a great deal both in prose and verse for Melbourne papers, for Sydney papers, and for up-country papers in New South Wales. He married early, and children grew up round him. When he died in Sydney towards the end of December 1905, he was but forty-seven years of age. The lingering illness that preceded his death left him in straightened circumstances; so straightened, in fact, that his friends thought less, at the finish, of his chances of immortality than of the prospects of keeping a roof over his and his children’s heads.
His most important publication was the volume At Dawn and Dusk, which appeared about eight years before his death. It consisted for the most part of occasional pieces, reprinted from various papers. It brought the author a certain amount of intelligent and appreciative criticism, and a slight—but only a slight—monetary reward. Thereafter he went on his way; the fitful and uncertain way of one whom circumstances had forced into journalism, but whom temperament had made a poet. The book mentioned is his permanent record.
There are certain moods that are not easily expressed in the forms of common speech; that are not easily expressed at all. There are occasions when the average man wishes—it may be only for an instant or two, but he wishes—that he had some better medium of thought transference than the ordinary prose of ordinary use. For those few moments he could desire that the gods had made him poetical, even if for the remainder of his life he would prefer that they made him anything else. Then, it may be, there comes beating across his brain the recollection of a similar mood interpreted adequately and finely by another. He is grateful for the chance of appropriating and taking to himself that which he did not individually create.