A couple of Classics

There’s been quite a deal of discussion lately across the spectrum about what the “new” Australian or the “old” Australian should know. Should they know about “the Don”? Who was Australia’s first prime minister? There’s not much argument, however, about the 1890s as an important decade in Australian history: the drought, the depression, the strikes, the federation movement and more. In this context, it’s worth reminding ourselves of a couple of poems from that period, both written in the 1890s but showing very different sides of our poetic psyche, a difference which can still be sensed in our poetry today. Since they’re both out of copyright I reprint them here in full.

* * *

Middleton’s Rouseabout

Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton’s Rouseabout.

Type of a coming nation,
In the land of cattle and sheep,
Worked on Middleton’s station,
“Pound a week and his keep”.

On Middleton’s wide dominions
Plied the stockwhip and shears;
Hadn’t any opinions,
Hadn’t any “idears”.

Swiftly the years went over,
Liquor and drought prevailed;
Middleton went as a drover
After his station had failed.

Type of a careless nation,
Men who are soon played out,
Middleton was:—and his station
Was bought by the Rouseabout.

Flourishing beard and sandy,
Tall and solid and stout:
This is the picture of Andy,
Middleton’s Rouseabout.

Now on his own dominions
Works with his overseers;
Hasn’t any opinions,
Hasn’t any “idears”.

Henry Lawson (1867–1922), “the face on the (original) $10 note”, is more highly regarded for his short stories than for his verse but it’s a mistake to overlook the best of his poems, such as “Middleton’s Rouseabout”. Written in 1890 and first published in 1896, it is very much a political poem in a very political era but it steers well clear of the ideological simplicities prevailing at the time—and since. As a man who knew poverty well and was inclined towards solidarity with the unionists of his day, Lawson has also strongly infused his own feelings into the poem.

Essentially, Lawson has little sympathy for the rouseabout (“Face of a country lout”) but this does not stop him from almost admiring his social and economic progress. While Middleton himself is falling prey to “liquor and drought”, the rouseabout, previously content to work for a “Pound a week and his keep”, sees his opportunity and buys his boss out. Andy, the rouseabout, however, does not make Middleton’s mistakes. He moves from being “Tall and freckled and sandy” to being “Tall and solid and stout”. There’s no evidence of his paying his own rouseabout any more than he once got himself but it’s noteworthy that the successful Andy “Works with his overseers”. This could be taken two ways: he rolls up his sleeves and works alongside his men in the manner of many station owners (at that time and since) or it could mean that he is so successful by now that he can entrust his “own dominions” to overseers.

One thing is consistent, however. Both as a rouseabout and as a boss, Andy is distinguished by not having any “opinions” or “idears”. There is an irony here. While shearers were facing off against the station owners in the great strike of 1890-91 and were fighting over the opposing merits of “closed shop” or “freedom of contract”, Andy, the rouseabout, has his own agenda. He can’t be bothered with the theories of either radicalism or conservatism. He is simply out for himself. There is no mention of any wife or child in the poem so we may reasonably assume that his upward mobility reflects his sheer determination rather than any domestic pressures. Andy is the “Type of a coming nation” and this will not, in Lawson’s view, necessarily be a good thing. Indeed, Lawson is impatient with, even contemptuous of, the fact that Andy doesn’t have any “idears”.

While his balladeering contemporaries were inclined to celebrations of horsemanship, humorous sporting events and the doings of bushrangers, Lawson, in “Middleton’s Rouseabout”, gives us some persuasive social and political analysis. In Lawson’s view, station owners like Middleton, whom people like Andy replace, probably deserve to be pushed aside, but Lawson has no great hopes for ex-rouseabouts who don’t have any “idears”. Lawson recognises that, given its climate and history, Australia is no place for a traditional, English-style land-owning aristocracy but the alternative to it, he sees, is not very charming either.

So, in a short space, Lawson has told us a great deal about life in the outback where “Liquor and drought prevailed”. It’s worth considering just how this occurs, especially since the poem uses quite a deal of repetition. Indeed, one might argue that the repetition of certain phrases—or the slight variations between them—contributes to this compression. Take, for example, the way Rouseabout initially rhymes with lout before it’s eventually rhymed with the more prosperous stout. Such repetitions also suggest that Andy is not unique; he’s a type we’re going to see more of. The lack of “idears” will be with us for a good while yet, it seems.

Perhaps equally important is the effect of Lawson’s triple rhythms, the dactylic and anapaestic feet that he uses extensively and interchangeably throughout (though there are, admittedly, quite a few iambic and trochaic feet as well). “This was a picture of Andy, / Middleton’s Rouseabout.” This rhythmic device tends to give an off-hand mood to the poem, a feeling that we’ve seen this before and we’ll see it again. The dactyls and anapaests suggest a line of dance; the waltz will go on and on with people like Andy replacing people like Middleton—and no one except the opportunists benefiting.

The poem is also tightly rhymed abab. There is quite a deal of repetition here, too (“sandy” / “Andy”, “dominions” / “opinions” and “nation” / “station”) but we shouldn’t object. All these repetitions have a purpose and are not a “cop-out”. The “station” is a microcosm for the “nation”—and there is, incidentally, an interesting contrast between the “coming” nation and the “careless” nation a little later. Andy remains “sandy” throughout his change of fortune—and it’s significant that, with or without “dominions”, he continues to have no “opinions”.

Some readers may wish to quarrel with the syntactical awkwardness of the inversion in stanza five—but this also helps to set up nicely the surprise of the following line and a half where Andy abruptly buys the station. In general, the narrative of the poem develops strongly, line by line, through a flexible syntax that manages to cohere effectively despite the suspended phrases that are resolved only in the last line or two of each stanza.

Although the main interest of the poem is clearly political, sociological and historical, Lawson has more than enough poetic technique for his purpose. In just twenty-eight lines he has given us an emblematic story that some novelists would spin out to 300 pages. He has left us in no doubt about his own “opinions” and yet he has not fallen for the simplifying doctrines espoused by either side of the political debate at the time. The poem’s tone may be popular but it’s really a very sophisticated work, in both content and manner. Lawson may be best remembered these days for short stories like “The Loaded Dog” and “The Drover’s Wife”, but a poem such as “Middleton’s Rouseabout” must also be seen as an important part of his legacy.

* * *

“We sat entwined an hour or two together”

We sat entwined an hour or two together
(how long I know not) underneath pine-trees
that rustled ever in the soft spring weather
stirr’d by the sole suggestion of the breeze:

we sat and dreamt that strange hour out together
fill’d with the sundering silence of the seas:
the trees moan’d for us in the tender weather
we found no word to speak beneath those trees

but listen’d wondering to their dreamy dirges
sunder’d even then in voiceless misery;
heard in their boughs the murmur of the surges
saw the far sky curv’d above the sea.

That noon seem’d some forgotten afternoon,
cast out from Life, where Time might scarcely be:
our old love was but remember’d as some swoon;
Sweet, I scarce thought of you nor you of me

but, lost in the vast, we watched the minutes hasting
into the deep that sunders friend from friend;
spake not nor stirr’d but heard the murmurs wasting
into the silent distance without end:

so, whelm’d in that silence, seem’d to us as one
our hearts and all their desolate reverie,
the irresistible melancholy of the sun,
the irresistible sadness of the sea.

It is strange to think of this poem being written in Australia during what historians like to call “The Roaring Nineties” when balladists like Lawson and Paterson were at their peak and the Australian colonies were patriotically converging on federation. Of course, the scholar-poet Christopher Brennan (1870–1932), was a very different man from Lawson and Paterson (who were different enough themselves, of course).

Christopher Brennan, more than seventy years after his death, still divides opinion among Australian poets and academics. To some he seems our first real “modern” poet, a man who famously corresponded with the French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé. To others, he is the classic poète maudit, a man of great gifts who fell short of his potential. The latter group tend to see Kenneth Slessor (1901–71) as the more important founding figure. Brennan’s “We sat entwined an hour or two together”, however, remains a strangely compelling poem more than a century after it was completed in 1894. It lyrically evokes a timeless moment—and is itself somehow timeless, perhaps as a result of this accomplishment. It looks back 300 years to love poems as early as John Donne’s “The Extasie” but is not diminished or dated by such comparisons.

It is generally assumed by scholars that the lovers in the poem are Brennan himself and Anna Werth, whom he met while studying in Berlin in 1892 and married in Sydney in 1897. In 1894 Brennan was back working in the New South Wales public service and waiting for Anna to join him. The poem was begun the day before he left Berlin. We can only speculate on what Fraulein Anna thought of Brennan’s version of the event described, but it is not hard to see from the poem that the marriage was likely to collapse eventually.

As with Donne before him, Brennan also describes an ecstatic episode (“an hour or two … where Time might scarcely be”) but his concerns in “We sat entwined an hour or two together” seem to be with something rather larger than two lovers under pine trees in the “soft spring weather”, pleasant though that image is. Certainly they are “entwined an hour or two together” but they are also speechless and feel the “trees moan[ing] for us”. In the third stanza the poet considers them already “sunder’d” and by the fourth he is saying that “our old love [is] but remember’d as some swoon”.

It is a timeless moment—but time is also escaping them; the minutes are “hasting / into the deep that sunders friend from friend”. Eventually, in the final stanza, the poet sees that the silence of the lovers’ “desolate reverie” is but a small part of some much larger desolation: “the irresistible melancholy of the sun, / the irresistible sadness of the sea”. Brennan was born, raised and (almost certainly) died a Catholic but it is not hard to see the influence of post-Darwinian, nineteenth-century agnostics here. The German word Weltschmerz may also apply.

What is it then that makes this poem so pleasurable to read more than a century after it was written? The poem’s biographical origins are interesting but perhaps increasingly irrelevant. Brennan’s story, especially with its numerous setbacks in his closing years, is a sad one but this is not what we should focus on. Our concern is more with the apparent timelessness of that “forgotten afternoon” and how the poet manages to create this impression in our minds.

A key element here is Brennan’s clever use of repetition—not only the abab rhyme scheme adhered to throughout but the persistence of the long ee sound. It features in five out of the poem’s six stanzas and is particularly important in the first two where the poet employs the exact, insistent rhyme of trees, breeze and seas. The repetitive sound of the sea is the poem’s backdrop (despite the fact that he describes it three times as silent). The poet makes us aware of this repetition but, increasingly, in a subliminal way.

Another important element is the juxtaposition of positive and negative imagery. We have the “entwined” couple and the “soft spring weather” in the opening stanza—and the memory of an earlier “swoon” in the fourth stanza—but we also have phrases such as “voiceless misery”, “the sundering silence of the seas” and “murmurs wasting / into the silent distance without end”. And this is all before we reach the two climactic metaphors which so memorably conclude the poem: “the irresistible melancholy of the sun, / the irresistible sadness of the sea”.

Yet another factor in this “timelessness” effect is Brennan’s leisurely, almost hypnotic use of the iambic pentameter. While Donne’s “The Extasie” is, by comparison, in an almost brisk tetrameter, Brennan’s longer line has an expansiveness which seems to suit his emphasis on being “lost in the vast” and on that “far sky … curv’d above the sea”. The poet is dealing with the illimitable here and anything shorter than a pentameter is unlikely to serve his purpose.

A further related effect is seen in the poem’s syntax. In six quatrains (twenty-four lines) there are only two sentences. This again stretches things remarkably. The almost infinite expanse of the subject matter is matched by the relative endlessness of the poem’s two sentences.

With all these devices (and others such as a plentiful use of assonance and alliteration) Brennan builds up an “irresistible” rhetorical momentum, a sustained lyrical presentation of a mental state well beyond the impress of mere diurnal concerns. We are borne along by the sadness of the young protagonists’ situation, by their “desolate reverie”—which nature itself seems to reinforce and, to some extent, explain. Their “old love”, their earlier passion, is now remembered merely as “some swoon”. There is only “the silent distance without end”. It’s hardly a cheery poem to be thrusting upon your bride-to-be.

Literary historians have pointed to Brennan’s difficulties in life as stemming from living not only with his foreign-born wife and four children (two of whom predeceased him) but also his German mother-in-law and his mentally fraught sister-in-law. It certainly must have been quite a difficult household for the scholarly symbolist poet to handle but, to judge from “We sat entwined an hour or two together”, Brennan’s troubles lay deeper than that. They needn’t, however, prevent us from enjoying the universality of his poem, whatever our own particular situation might happen to be when reading it.

More of Geoff Page’s poetry will be appearing shortly in Quadrant.