[Editor: This review of Ballad and Lyrical Poems (by John Shaw Neilson) was published in The Daily News (Perth, WA), 8 September 1924.]
John Shaw Neilson.
Though Australia has more poets than prose writers, the Australian public as a whole is not a poetry-loving public. Much of it still believes Adam Lindsay Gordon to be our typical singer, and, except by adoption, Gordon, whose tragic death brought him so vividly under notice, was not an Australian. Henry Lawson is better known by his prose than by his verse, and he makes an appeal which, so far, no other Australian prose writer has been able to make. Yet the test of literary greatness cannot be limited to a writer’s own country. It must be international in character. Australia is in need of a poet who can interpret her spirit, not only to Australians, but to readers of other nations, and who makes an appeal to the people as well as to the critic. She may have found him in the person of Shaw Neilson.
In a preface to “Ballad and Lyrical Poems,” Mr. A. G. Stephens tells us that John Shaw Neilson was born in South Australia in 1872, and that when a boy of 9 he came to Victoria. His history is given in two terse sentences. “The boy had little schooling, and early went to work in the hard way of the bush. In that way he has remained.” Surely no more perfect credentials were ever held by any other Australian poets, some of whom living in cities have harked back to such things as pirates and mermaids, perhaps in revolt against the routine of suburbia. Shaw Neilson has no need to use thought-worn material. He lives, sees, feels; has a delicate imagination, and the great gifts of simplicity and understanding. That is why he makes an appeal to the people. Mr. Stephens is speaking as a critic when he writes: “First of Australian poets, he brings honor to the land that bred him.”
Youth has precedence in this little book of verse. “The sun is up and death is far away,” when a boy, wandering through the bush in the early morning, hears Nature speak to him in many tongues. Birds sing “the loves of leafy choristers,” and:
For his delight the trees have learned to talk,
And all the flowers have little laughs with him.
The day is young, so is the boy, and the key of the poem is major; but in The Land Where I Was Born there are minor notes. The heavens are high in “my countree,” the people small; the sun is sweet, but “a thousand dark things walk at night.” While parrots screamed and jays hopped chattering, knights on horseback and smiling queens trooped through the bush. “Have you ever been down to my countree?” the poet asks, and then, as though eager to admit us to the great fellowship of childhood, answers his own question—
I know you have been to my countree,
Though I never saw you there.
I know you have loved all the things I loved,
Flowery, sweet and fair.
The days were long; it was always play;
But we — we are tired and worn —
They could not welcome us back again
To the land where I was born.
Along the River he meets “the black duck’s brood — a little fleet at sea,” and:—
Across the stream, slowly and with much shrieking,
Softly a full-eyed wallaby descends
To the blue water’s edge. I see him drinking —
And he and I and all his folk are friends.
In May “silver-hatted mushrooms make soft entrance” through the soil; the slow plough leaves brown furrows behind it; the sun goes down on a dim and beautiful day:—
But there are suns a many for mine eyes
Day after day.
Delightsome in grave greenery they rise,
Red oranges in May.
The nest of the mound-builder is not merely a wonderful incubator, or a record of great industry, but—
This and no other was thy shrine;
This monument to birth was thine;
Great was the love within thee hid,
O builder of the Pyramid.
Dawn, a kurrajong tree, a little blue flower, the song of a bird, and other things belonging to Nature, take us in spirit to that great place “where music is of the sunlight, strong and free.” In Song Be Delicate he gives us this exquisite verse—
Let your voice be delicate,
The bees are home.
All their day’s love is sunken
Safe in comb.
Some poets are essentially seers of Nature, others of humanity; but Shaw Neilson’s vision is not limited to the bush. Like Henry Lawson, he is greatly endowed with sympathy; he can see the good motive underlying the indifferent action; probably, with Browning, he can sense success even in failure. At the Wedding in September—
They talked as neighbors solemnly
Of lambs and wheat and wool.
And then in two short verses he paints a delicate pen picture of a woman’s tragedy—
The bridegroom was the happiest man
That ever stepped the town;
But the little seamstress, she had cried,
And made the wedding gown.Oh, ask me not why she had cried!
Nay, ask a simpler thing.
Why do the little birds go out
To meet the kiss of Spring?
Old Nell Dickerson is a ballad of a sealed heart; Inland Born, a ballad of a hungry heart, which many outback women will understand. Old Granny Sullivan, who “minds” all the past, is a cheerful old person, but Sheedy, the sundowner, lies dying alone in his tent—
Why should the north wind speak,
Creeping and crying?
Who else could mourn for him?
Sheedy was dying!
As Henry Lawson’s characters live, so do these people. If we have never met them in the flesh, we meet them in the spirit, and probably understand them better than if we had known them personally.
That old fuel for flames of anger, straying cattle, is the cause of The Quarrel With the Neighbor. Each neighbor foreswears the other; each reminds the other of past favors; each swears never again to darken the other’s doorway. But the raconteur is smitten with sickness, and is still thinking bitterly of his neighbor, when a shadow falls on the doorway and the neighbor comes in. They talk of markets, of the weather, of other common things, and the poem ends—
So spoke we and slowly
Of days yet to come.
But at his going. Why,
Why was I dumb?When at the doorway
He laughed good-bye,
How great was my neighbor!
How mean was I!
In All the World’s a Lolly Shop life is behind the counter, and the customers eat their sweets in very different ways. The philosophy of the poem is optimistic, for this universal shops always trades fair; but customers must trade fair, too—
And if we have not heart to love,
We are not wanted then.
So let us hide as ladies calm,
And courteous gentlemen.
In grey streets “wreckers and ruined wreckage” meet, and the poet fears for a Little White Girl—
Fears are mine for a face so pretty!
Violets perish, lilies are few.
There is an ache in my heart for you:
In all the tawdry, treacherous city.
“The seasons sixteen times had turned” round a brown-eyed daughter, when she went to town, and—
One evening, when the sun was done,
A woman came. Her eyes were brown,
But our child came not from the town.
He would “throw a heaven” around children, and knows that the Child of Tears, who was meant for Paradise, plays about the brink of Hell. He might have taken for his text Isaiah’s declaration that “love covereth all sins” when he wrote—
Teach me not, tell me not,
Love ever sinned!
See how her petticoat
Sweetens the wind.
His love lyrics are dainty. Here is a verse from one of them—
Dark eyes are hers; but in their darkness lies
All the white holiness of Paradise;
A tender violet within them shows,
And the unsullied beauty of the rose.
Dark eyes are hers.
Shaw Neilson deals with universal subjects, and makes Australia part of the Universe even when he is using typically Australian backgrounds. He is of the people, and he writes for the people, as well as for the critics. The quiet beauty of his work is like balm in these noisy days of haste and competition. His influence is unifying. He brings a message from the heart of Nature to the heart of Humanity, and on the common ground of sympathy he makes all Humanity one. He even succeeds in bringing close together the critic and the people.
Source:
The Daily News (Perth, WA), 8 September 1924, p. 7
Also published in:
The Advocate (Devonport and Burnie, Tas.), 31 October 1924, p. 3
Editor’s notes:
The text refers to, and quotes from, the poems “The Quarrel with the Neighbour” and “The Wedding in September”, using the spelling “neighbor”; however, in both of those poems John Shaw Neilson used the spelling “neighbour”.
Browning = Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), an English poetess (née Moulton-Barrett)
comb = (in the context of bees) honeycomb
covereth = (archaic) covers
dumb = mute, unable to speak; unwilling to speak; not speaking (can also refer to: a lack of intelligence; someone who lacks intelligence, or who is regarded as stupid; something which is stupid, foolish, or pointless)
mind = (British dialect) remember
nay = an archaic form of “no”; however, it is still sometimes used regarding voting (e.g. to vote yea or nay), in formal circumstances, in some dialects (e.g. in the north of England), and as a substitute for “no” when some emphasis is desired
outback = remote rural areas; sparsely-inhabited back country; often given as one word and capitalized, “Outback” (variations: out back, outback, out-back, Out Back, Outback, Out-Back)
seer = someone who foretells the future; a mystic with supernatural insight into the future; a wise man; a prophet (in the modern sense, an expert who predicts the economic, political, or social future)
sundowner = a swagman, or tramp, who walked from station to station, ostensibly to look for work, but with no intention of doing any, who would deliberately time his arrival at a farm or station late enough in the evening, or at sundown, so that he could ask for food and lodging, but with little to no risk of being asked to perform some work in exchange; can also refer to a swagman, in general terms, without the negative connotations regarding one who avoids work
thee = (archaic) you
thine = (archaic) yours; your (“thine”, meaning “your”, is usually placed before a word which begins with a vowel, e.g. “To thine own self be true”)
[Editor: Changed “Forf his delight” to “For his delight”; “but The Land Where” to “but in The Land Where”; “talked as neighborst” to “talked as neighbors”; “laughed good-bye.” to “laughed good-bye,” (changed the full-stop to a comma, as per the original poem); “my heart for you.” To “my heart for you:” (changed the full-stop to a colon, as per the original poem).]
Leave a Reply