Fiction · 1893
Poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon
Bush ballads and horse-racing verse in fast, galloping rhythms — "How We Beat the Favourite," "The Sick Stockrider," "The Swimmer," "From the Wreck" — alongside lyric and elegiac poems, and, filling nearly a third of the book, the verse drama Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric, a tale of sorcery and doomed love in medieval Normandy told across thirty-one scenes.
Gordon wrote through the 1860s while working as a mounted policeman, horse-breaker and celebrated amateur steeplechase rider in South Australia and Victoria. His last collection, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, was published in Melbourne on 23 June 1870; he took his own life the following day. His friend and fellow writer Marcus Clarke edited this posthumous collected edition, contributing the biographical and critical preface that opens it and later argued Gordon's work marked "the beginnings of a national school of Australian poetry."
This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete 1893 collected edition: Sea Spray and Smoke Drift, Hippodromania, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric, and Gordon's miscellaneous poems, with Clarke's preface.
Contents
- 1893 Edition
- Preface
- Podas Okus
- Gone
- Unshriven
- Fytte I — Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes
- Fytte II — Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes
- Fytte III — Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes
- Fytte IV — Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes
- Fytte V — Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes
- Fytte VI — Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes
- Fytte VII — Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes
- Fytte VIII — Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes
- Borrow’d Plumes
- Prologue
- Epilogue
- A Legend of Madrid
- Fauconshawe
- Rippling Water
- Cui Bono
- Bellona
- The Song of the Surf
- Whisperings in Wattle-Boughs
- Confiteor
- Sunlight on the Sea
- Delilah
- From Lightning and Tempest
- Wormwood and Nightshade
- Ars Longa
- The Last Leap
- Quare Fatigasti
- Hippodromania; Or, Whiffs from the Pipe
- Part I — Visions in the Smoke
- Part II — The Fields of Coleraine
- Part III — Credat Judaeus Apella
- Part IV — Banker’s Dream
- Part V
- Prologue
- Epilogue
- The Roll of the Kettledrum; or, the Lay of the Last Charger
- A Dedication
- The Sick Stockrider
- The Swimmer
- From the Wreck
- No Name
- Wolf and Hound
- De Te
- How we Beat the Favourite
- Fragmentary Scenes from the Road to Avernus
- Scene I — “Discontent”
- Scene VII — “Two Exhortations”
- Scene IX — “In the Garden”
- Scene X — “After the Quarrel”
- Scene XI — “Ten Paces Off”
- Doubtful Dreams
- The Rhyme of Joyous Garde
- Thora’s Song
- The Three Friends
- A Song of Autumn
- The Romance of Britomarte
- Laudamus
- A Basket of Flowers
- A Fragment
- To My Sister
- “The Old Leaven”
- An Exile’s Farewell
- “Early Adieux”
- A Hunting Song
- To a Proud Beauty
- Thick-headed Thoughts
- Dramatis Personae
- Scene — A Castle in Normandy
- Scene — The Same
- Scene — A Cliff on the Breton Coast, Overhanging the Sea
- Scene — The Castle in Normandy
- Scene — The Castle Hall
- Scene — The Same
- Scene — A Chamber in the Castle
- Scene — A Chapel Not Very Far from Hugo’s Castle
- Scene — A Room in the Castle
- Scene — A Road on the Norman Frontiers
- Scene — An Apartment in a Wayside Inn
- Scene — A Wooded Rising Ground, Near the Rhine
- Scene — The Summit of a Burning Mountain
- Scene — Chamber of a Wayside Inn
- Scene — Another Wayside House, Near the Norman Frontier
- Scene — A Rough, Hilly Country
- Scene — A Peak in a Mountainous Country Overhanging a Rocky Pass
- Scene — The Wayside House
- Scene — A Camp Near the Black Forest
- Scene — A Farm-house on the Rhine (About a mile from the Convent)
- Scene — A Chamber in the Nuns’ Apartments of the Convent
- Scene — A Farm-house Near the Convent
- Scene — The Guest Chamber of the Convent
- Scene — The Corridor Outside the Guest Chamber
- Scene — The Chapel of the Convent
- Scene — The Guest Room of the Convent
- Scene — The Outskirts of Rudolph’s Camp
- Scene — The Court-yard of the Old Farm
- Scene — A Room in the Convent Tower Overlooking the Gate
- Scene — A Room in the Convent
- Scene — The Chapel of the Convent
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1833–1870 · Victorian
Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833–1870) was born at Charlton Kings, Gloucestershire, England, and educated at Cheltenham College and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before emigrating to South Australia in 1853. He worked as a mounted policeman and horse-breaker, became a celebrated amateur steeplechase rider, and sat briefly in the South Australian House of Assembly. He published Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric and Sea Spray and Smoke Drift in 1867; his best-known collection, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, appeared in Melbourne on 23 June 1870, and he shot himself near his home at Brighton the following day, worn down by debt and injuries from years of racing falls. He is regarded as Australia's national poet and is the only Australian commemorated with a bust in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, placed there in 1934.
Adjacent records
