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So much, then, for the outward form of his poetry. We have now to consider what is the significance to us of his life and work, of his personality, and of his “criticism of life.”

In the first place, let us begin by stating that Gordon has a personality. Mr. Hammersley tells us how “at times Gordon was the strangest, most weird, mysterious man I ever saw, and I could not help feeling almost afraid of him, and yet there was a fascination about him that made me like to see him.” There was the fascination of his converse. “He was one of the few men I have known in the colonies,” asseverates Mr. Hammersley, “that never made me tire of listening to him.” And there was the fascination of his individuality: “His wild haunting eye,” “a look something like what is termed the evil eye.” (This reminds one of what Mr. Clarke has to say about “the dominant note of Australian scenery: Weird Melancholy.”) Mr. Woods’ whole article bears witness to this personal fascination of Gordon’s. Well, it is the same in his poetry: I mean, that it is the same as Mr. Hammersley means. There is attraction in Gordon. We want to go to see anything that he has had to do with. We seek out his grave and brood over it.[5] He is the Australian fellow to Baudelaire and James Thomson, the last martyrs, let us hope, to our terrible period of transition from the Old World into the New, from Mediævalism into Modernity. There is attraction in Gordon. We should like to have seen and known the original of Laurence Raby, of Maurice, of the man of the “Sea-spray and Smoke-Drift,” and “Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes.” He is an individuality, and a modern and a colonial individuality. He looks at life as it is, not as it is represented.