"A dreary wilderness, a desert wild Of Nature's varied loveliness despoiled, Stretched out, I see, in barrenness and woe A fitting emblem of the world below; Deep gloom and dread The land o'erspread."
I cannot say of what denomination the rev. poet was; but I understand it was written before the days of the Salvation Army commenced to enrich the world's library of hymns.
There was also a poet named Kendall, of whom Australia is very proud. The Press critics call him an "impulsive songster," and I do remember taking a little thing of his away in memory after reading a collection of his verse. The little thing went:
"There is a river in the hills I long to think about, Perhaps the searching feet of man Have never found it out."
It suggested to me at the time "Mary had a little lamb"--slightly uneven in the feet. Kendall was accused of purloining from Tennyson, and he explained--"We cannot pass through the woods without taking away the smell of violets." But that wasn't the charge; it was that he dug the violets up by the roots and transplanted them in his own pages. But Kendall has gone; he has also his reward. I saw a life-sized painting of him in the hall of a Sydney sporting hotel when I was staying there. For what more can a poet ask in Australia?
Brunton Stephens, though he wrote in Australia, received his impression and education in the old world. He did not adopt Australia till he was 31 years of age, and a man gathers few new impressions after thirty; he lives in and writes of those of youth. Thus, strictly speaking, Stephens was not an Australian poet. Yet he was the only man in the country who ever wrote with a philosophic outlook (and a knowledge of prosody). He was not an admirer of Australian poetry either: "It lacks a fundamental basis of brain" was his verdict. Poor Stephens, Stephens the stickler for the precise word, the admirer of literary craftsmanship--this is what he got at the hands of an Australian bard, who wrote a critical biography of him on the literary page of the National newspaper; mine are the italics and parenthetical remarks:
"He was the youngest of a family of six--two brothers and three sisters." (Stephens once taught mathematics.)
"Fielding, Smollett, Shakespeare, _and_ the English classics were more to the boy's taste than athletics...." (What nationality were F., S. and S.?)