‘She rose when I hit her. I saw the stream glitter,

A wide scarlet nostril flashed close to my knee;

Between sky and water The Clown came and caught her;

The space that he cleared was a caution to see.


‘And forcing the running, discarding all cunning,

A length to the front went the rider in green;

A long strip of stubble, and then the big double,

Two stiff flights of rails with a quickset between.


‘She raced at the rasper, I felt my knees grasp her,

I found my hands give to the strain on the bit;

She rose when The Clown did—our silks as we bounded

Brushed lightly, our stirrups clashed loud as we lit.


[p 181]
‘A rise steeply sloping, a fence with stone coping,

The last—we diverged round the base of the hill;

His path was the nearer, his leap was the clearer,

I flogged up the straight, and he led sitting still.


‘She came to his quarter, and on still I brought her,

And up to his girth, to his breast-plate she drew;

A short prayer from Neville just reached me, “The Devil!”

He muttered—lock’d level the hurdles we flew.’

After a glance at the crowd where, as seen by the rider, all ‘figures are blended and features are blurred’—

‘On still past the gateway she strains in the straight way,

Still struggles, “The Clown by a short neck at most!”

He swerves, the green scourges, the stand rocks and surges,

And flashes, and verges, and flits the white post.


‘Aye! so ends the tussle—I knew the tan muzzle

Was first, though the ring men were yelling “Dead Heat!”

A nose I could swear by, but Clarke said “The mare by

A short head.” And that’s how the favourite was beat.’

It was by this piece, according to Marcus Clarke, that the poet’s early reputation was made. ‘Intensely nervous, and feeling much [p 182] of that shame at the exercise of the higher intelligence which besets those who are known to be renowned in field sports, Gordon produced his poems shyly, scribbled them on scraps of paper, and sent them anonymously to magazines. It was not until he discovered one morning that everybody knew a couplet or two of “How we beat the Favourite” that he consented to forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a verse-maker.’ Even in this picture of the excitements of the turf, there is nothing that would not be as true of Epsom or Ascot as of Randwick or Flemington. Yet, it is Australian in the sense that it expresses the one taste which, of all those inherited by the people from their British ancestors, seems never likely to be lost (as it was by the American colonists)—which, on the contrary, has gained in ardour in the new land. Gordon was a pronounced believer in the efficacy of field sports as a means of maintaining the nerve and hardihood of the race. In one of his minor pieces he vigorously affirms that

[p 183]
‘If once we efface the joys of the chase

From the land, and out-root the Stud,

Good-bye to the Anglo-Saxon Race,

Farewell to the Norman Blood.’

With him the fearless huntsman makes the fearless soldier. Both are to be cultivated and admired, and when the latter dies needlessly, as at Balaclava, we are to be none the less proud of him,

‘As a type of our chivalry.’

Of the longer poems, the two best in artistic quality are ‘The Rhyme of Joyous Garde’ and ‘The Sick Stockrider.’ They afford a complete contrast in subject, tone and treatment. The old Arthurian story is the finer and more finished. There is a nobility in its expression not elsewhere equalled by the author. But the other poem is more direct and simple in its pathos, more easily understood. It tells something of familiar experience in language irresistibly touching and musical. It would be interesting and a favourite if only through the obvious fact that it describes in part some of Gordon’s own early life.

[p 184]
‘’Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass

To wander as we’ve wandered many a mile,

And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass,

Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while.

’Twas merry ’mid the backwoods, when we spied the station roofs,

To wheel the wild-scrub cattle at the yard,

With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs;

Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard.


‘Aye! we had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang,

When they bolted from Sylvester’s on the flat;

How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang

To the strokes of Mountaineer and Acrobat!

Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath,

Close beside them through the ti-tree scrub we dashed;

And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath!

And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crashed!’

‘The Rhyme of Joyous Garde’ loses in appreciation by assuming familiarity on the part of the reader with all the details of the story. It is too allusive. It is a description [p 185] more of Launcelot’s remorse than of the crime which occasions it. As to the other classic themes, they probably avail as little to the reputation of the author as did the elegant quotations which he inflicted upon the South Australian legislators. ‘He talked of the Danai, whilst they were vastly more interested in the land valuators.’