ng fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs;
Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard.

'Aye! we had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang,
When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat;
How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang
To the strokes of Mountaineer and Acrobat!
Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath,
Close beside them through the ti-tree scrub we dashed;
And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath!
And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crashed!'

'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde' loses in appreciation by assuming
familiarity on the part of the reader with all the details of the story.
It is too allusive. It is a description more of Launcelot's remorse
than of the crime which occasions it. As to the other classic themes,
they probably avail as little to the reputation of the author as did the
elegant quotations which he inflicted upon the South Australian
legislators. 'He talked of the Danai, whilst they were vastly more
interested in the land valuators.'

Gordon's work was introduced to the English public by an article in
_Temple Bar_ in 1884, and in 1888 a short memoir of him, entitled _The
Laureate of the Centaurs_ (now out of print), was published. Since then
his poems have become known throughout the English-speaking world. Is
this because he is called an Australian poet--because people wish to
learn something of Australian life from his pages? Do English readers
ever ask for the poems of Harpur, or Henry Kendall, or Brunton Stephens?
No; Gordon's poems are admired for the human interest in them; for what
they tell of tastes and personal qualities dear to the pleasure-loving
and fighting Briton in whatever land he may be. It is the sort of
admiration that finds fit expression when an English officer and artist
makes a present to the publishers of a spirited and valuable set of
drawings to illustrate the poem of the Balaclava Charge. No other
Australian poet has yet found entrance to the great popular libraries of
England. Kendall, who almost deserves to be called the Australian
Shelley, tells more of Nature in one of his graceful pages than can be
found in a volume of his contemporary. But his thoughts are too remote
from the common interests of life; and of his own character he has
recorded only what is sad and painful. For the rest, his brief history
seems to prove that scarce any service may be