CURRENT LITERATURE.
Songs of the South. By John Bernard O'Hara, M.A. (Ward, Lock, and Co., London, New York, and Melbourne.)—These are songs of considerable promise, being evidently the work of a young
man with great love of beauty, and not a little gift for expression. They are all Australian, and full of the vividness and hopes of Australian anticipations, as well as of the wild Australian scenery. To English readers, a curious effect is produced by the constant association of Christmas with the deep summer, and of June with the modified winter of Australia. For example :— " But what is the song, 0 silver bells, You sing of the ferny Austral dells, Of the bracken height, and the sylvan stream, And the breezy woodland's summer dream, Lulled by the lute of the slow sweet rills In the trembling heart of the great grave hills? Ali, what is the song that you sing to me Of the soft blue isles of our shimmering sea, Where the slow tides sleep, and a purple haze Fringes the skirts of the windless bays, That, ringed with a circlet of beauty fair, Start in the face of the dreamer there ; 0, what is the burden of your sweet chimes, Bells of the golden Christmas times?"
"Though the dark season's frost may fret White August, now she softly sings With one fair hand in Winter's set And one in shining Spring's; And bringeth early summer dreams, To waft sweet mem'rios o'er the soul, Of breezy dawns, where fretting streams Round wild ' Bockalpine
The verse is all buoyant, but the poetry is rather poetry of promise than of actual achievement. Or again :—
Previous page
