hopeless circle centres in the old
village by the Thames--(trade mark, 'Commerce and Christ.')"--SYDNEY
JEPHCOTT, "_Australian Standard_."

AN AUSTRALIAN POET.

"Francis Adams is about the least Australian of the Australian poets.
There is in his work lack of wattle-bloom and waratah, rollicking
rhyme and galloping jingle. There is much of old-world problems and
old-world troubles, which are old-world simply because we here have
not had time enough to breed the fever germ to a ravaging pestilence.
We have, however, the fever germ, and Francis Adams does our young
country yeoman service in awakening a fear for the future in his
latest book of poems, 'Songs of the Army of the Night.' The book is
not all night though. It is a cantata without music. The first part
is all gloom; angry threatening clouds bar out the light of the coming
dawn; footsteps of the weary and fallen plash along in the mud and
darkness; the lightning of angry steel, gleaming phosphorescent in the
night; the hoarse hum of famished millions moiling along with a dim
yearning for a bloody vengeance, contribute the details of a grim
picture of realistic misery. The first part deserves the title given
to the whole book, 'Songs of the Army of the Night.' The third part
is perturbed and stormy, the sea heaving and surging after a tempest;
but already the day is breaking, and young hope is felt in the warmth
of the sun's first rays. The third part might be justly termed 'Songs
of the Dawn.' The second part is hot and heavy with the languorous
heat of the tropics. . . . The whole book is a hymn in praise of
fodder. The people march hungry, hoarse with lack of sustenance,
gripping their firelocks with feverish, skeleton hands, glaring
fiercely with famished eyes towards the granaries of the wealthy. . .
. This is the sermon of Nature: 'If you would be good, eat.' It is
in the first part that we hear the trumpet-blast of the social
message. Here the verses throb with a realistic agony, a lyric
Zolaism, that chains the eyes to the page with a virile fascination.
It is so simple, too--the coarse, strong meat of the poetry of first
principles. The lines are hot and fervid; the poet's pulses keep time
with the great heart of human woe. This is socialism in verse,
anarchism in the guise of a Grecian statue. 'Outside London' breathes
thick