Another two Neilson Poets.

Andrew Peake of South Australia has written to Margin about two poets of Penola, South Australia who were members of the same family as the famous Australian Poet John Shaw Neilson. The two brothers John and William Neilson were his uncles. Mr Peake is collecting the poems of the two brothers who published their poems in the local newspapers of Mount Gambier, the South Eastern Star and the Border Watch in the 1870s and 1880s. Readers will be familiar with the poetry of the famous John Shaw Neilson but may not be aware of the poetry of his two uncles Most of their poems have not been republished since their original appearance in the local newspapers. Mr. Peake has sent a copy of one of John Neilson's poems which is of interest because it is an In Memoriam written on the death of the Australian novelist Marcus Clarke. I have reprinted this poem here in Margin.

Mr Peake who runs a small publishing firm The Tudor Australia Press is planning to publish a book of some of the poems of the two brothers. In fact John Neilson did have some of his poems published in a book entitled The Men of the Fifties produced by the Hawthorn Press in the 1930s.

The poems of both John and William and as Mr. Peake says of other poets that appear at the same time in newspapers fall into a number of categories: In Memoriam poems, poems for special occasions (e.g. the welcome of Sir W.F.D. Jervois, Prologue for the Caledonian Social), Nationalistic poems (e.g. 'My Ain Countrie, Scottish Austral's Dream, Australia's Starry Cross) local events, international events, (Trafalgar's signal Garibaldi) and more general subjects (Watch for the Rainbow, Ode to the Wattle). These subjects are similar to much of the poetry published in Australian newspapers in the nineteenth century.

It is difficult to publish books of poems from the early days of Australian poetry. Periodicals are generally not interested even in those by our more famous poets. A book of early Australian poetry will not sell more than a few copies. The Mulini Press does publish a booklet each year by some of our earliest poets. The editor uses them to send to friends instead of Christmas cards and makes them available for general sale. You might consider buying a few and sending them to your closest friends instead of spending your money on Christmas cards which will only be thrown away.

In Memoriam

Marcus Clarke the gifted author of some of our most popular Australian novels has passed away says a Victorian paper, at the early age of 34, leaving his family in anything but affluent circumstances.

   I

   A master's spirit has passed away,
   Whose fingers lately grasped the pen;
   A noble heart has turned to clay,
   Lost from the busy haunts of men.
   Romancer of the golden age,
   Of genius of the genial page!

   II

   Word painter of the early days!
   Oh, gifted writer of the lines
   Whose genius lighted up the page
   He wrote for us in hardest times.
   Ere stranded on the darksome shore
   Where the lone waves sing never more.

   III

   Perchance in days that yet shall be,
   When camping by some desert spring,
   Round the campfire 'neath the tree
   Where wild birds sleep with folded wing.

   Pioneers well bronzed in those days
   May speak of him and read his lines,
   While shadows in the ruddy blaze
   Dance Titan like against the pines.
   IV

   'And the romancer,' they shall say,
   'Who was he?' He was one of men
   Whose sun went down at noon of day;
   A luckless wielder of the pen.
   In young Victoria's golden age
   A sunbeam danced upon his page.

   V

   He wrote of where the shining seas
   Their thunder march of triumph roll'd;
   When on the early summer breeze
   The wattle shed its down of gold;
   While song-birds on the mellow air,
   Sang summer, summer, summer fair.

   VI

   He was the friend of those who strung
   In woodlands dim, their ringing rhymes;
   Gordon and Kendall, men who rung
   On Austral desert tolls the chimes
   Full of the wildest sweetest notes The
   singers of the good old times.

   VII

   Wealth comes too late to help the dead!
   The generous hand stretched forth in vain;
   When once the master's spirits fled
   The singer comes not back again--
   Whose genius cast its witching spell
   O'er all the land he loved so well.

   VIII

   When Fortune in her wayward moods
   Looks frowning on life's luckless shifts;
   When lost in sorrows tangled woods,
   The hearts that seek her wished-for gifts
   Are often, at the close of day,
   Broken, and empty sent away.

   IX

   Lie lightly Earth upon him now;
   'Neath our blue skies his sleep is calm
   Rest to the brain and throbbing brow;
   The darkest hour is nigh the dawn.
   The thorniest paths may be the best
   That leads us soonest up to rest.
   JN

I have found verse III rather odd because it is unusual for a poet to miss his system of rhyme and verse form. I have divided verse III into two verses and it may be that when the poem was typeset four lines were missed either by accident or because there was not enough space in the column, a not unusual thing to happen in the editing of a newspaper. Editor