818 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 



Yet all is still as death. Wild solitude 

 Reigns undisturbed along that voiceless shore ; 



And every tree seems standing as it stood 



Six thousand years ago. The loud wave's roar 



Were music in these wilds. The wise and good 

 That wont of old, as hermits to adore 



The God of Nature in the desert drear, 



Might sure have found a tit sojourning here. 



Dr. Lang was not a poet; bat he did once or twice in his 

 life write a few pleasant verses, and he might have possibly 

 written many more if he had not devoted the leisure which 

 the occupation of a busy clergyman allowed him to the task 

 of fighting a hundred people all at once on a score of different 

 topics. 



But the man whom we are to venerate as the first apostle 

 of true poetry on these shores is Charles Harpur, he of whom 

 Kendall sings : 



So we that knew this singer dead, 



Whose hands attuned the harp Australian, 

 May set the face and bow the head. 



And mourn his fate and fortunes alien. 

 For when the fiery power of youth 



Had jmssed away and left him nameless. 

 Serene as light and strong as truth. 



He live his life, untired and blameless. 

 And far and wide this man of men, 



Of wintry hair and wasted feature 

 Had fellowship with gorge and glen, 

 And learnt the secret runes of nature. 



From his earliest years Charles Harpur was a son of the 

 forest, and knew the Australian bush as few others have 

 had opportunity of knowing it. His father was a school- 

 master in the days of the early settlement at Sydney ; he 

 was engaged in the service of the Government at Windsor, 

 on the HaAvkesbury, and it was there that the yonthful poet 

 passed his boyhood, wandering far and free through all the 

 forests that lie between the sea and the Blue Mountains : 

 penetrating far into the romantic recesses where the tribu- 

 taries of the Hawkesbury gather their fern -enfolded waters : 

 climbing the slopes of the mountains themselves in those 

 pristine days when all was remote and solitary and mys- 

 terious. As a young man he had experiences of cedar- 

 cutting, and of other occupations which made him live for 

 weeks and months far in the wilds, with no companion with 

 whom a mind like his could hold converse, save a treasured 

 volume of Shakespere or of Coleridge, of Wordsworth of 

 of Shellej^. 



