almost always in isolation, they have been regarded as accidental rather than intentional. They may be found in the old ballads, in Shakespeare and in Milton; but they have such a “rapid” effect that except in very few cases they are displeasing.

Whilst there is no doubt that it has never been extensively employed as a basic unit in the poetry of Britain, the case is different as regards the poetry of Australia, where it has become the basis of the most popular of the colonial metres. The poetry most in favour in Australia is that which in spirit approaches the old English ballad, though it must be confessed it is the degenerate ballad that has exerted most influence—the “Robin Hood” type rather than the “Glasgerion,” “Clerk Saunders,” or “Wife of Usher's Well” type; but there is this to be said: that it is rather the form of the type than its matter that has exerted the influence.

Three-syllabled units constantly occur in even the best ballads, and, where artistically used, with most pleasing effect: they impart a “rapid” movement to the metre; and when the themes become more commonplace, more humorous, treating as they do of the lighter rather than the tragic side of life, this rapid movement becomes more and more marked, until many of the ballads are entirely trisyllabic. Though the four-syllabled unit is more rapid even than the three-syllabled, it did not evolve from the three-syllabled, and is more rarely found in that metre than in the two-syllabled.

The popular poetry of Australia is undoubtedly humorous, and it was to be expected that the humorous metre of England would exert its influence on the Australian poet, on account of its lively movement if for no other reason; and in Lindsay Gordon, who has been called the father of Australian poetry, out of his sixty-seven collected poems forty-five are three-syllabled, whilst only eighteen are two-syllabled. In four poems there can be traced the germ of what was to become a dominant metre: these four are “Unshriven,” “Whisperings in Wattle Boughs,” “A Hunting Song,” and the well-known poem “The Sick Stockrider.” The new metre is most likely to result from poems written in what are called trochaics, or two-syllabled feet stressed on the first syllable: in such cases the first and every alternate stress are dropped. In the poems of Kendall, the most truly poetic of the older Australians, there are twelve in these trochaics; but in no instance does the metre lapse into the metre under discussion, the four-syllabled.

It is different when we turn to later writers, well-known favourites such as Paterson and Lawson. Paterson's first book opens with and takes its name from a piece in this very measure, “The Man from Snowy River.” Here the beat is much more distinct than in Gordon:—

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush-horses—he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush-horses are,
And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight.

The usual reading of this stanza would require a stress on the first, third, and every odd syllable; but on an actual reading a very different result ensues. The first two lines are read—

There was mòve/ment at the stà/tion, for the wòrd/ had passed aròund/ That the còlt/ from old Regrèt/ had got awày/.

There is a slight stress on “passed,” “old” and “got,” but otherwise the lines fall perfectly naturally into four-syllabled units, giving lines of alternately four and three stresses—nothing more than English ballad-metre: in fact, the whole stanza is a perfect ballad stanza, but with four-syllabled units.

In Paterson's two volumes of poems, out of their eighty-one pieces there are twelve in the four-syllabled metre; in Lawson's two volumes, out of 114 pieces no less than twenty-eight bear the unmistakable stamp of this metre; Ogilvie has eleven out of a hundred; Boake four out of thirty-two; Brunton Stephens the high average of twelve out of fifty-seven.

Two pieces may be taken as contrast. In Kendall's imaginative poem “Hy-Brasil” occur the lines,—

Thère indèed was sìnging Èden, whère the grèat gold rìver rùns
Pàst the pòrch and gàtes of cryGstal, rìnged by stròng and shìning ònes!
Thère indèed was Gòd's own gàrden, saìling dòwn the sàpphire sèa—
Làwny dèlls and slòpes of sùmmer, dàzzling strèam and ràdiant trèe!

Here it is impossible, except perhaps in two instances, to slur the stressed odd syllables; but read in the same way the following stanzas from Law-son's “Australian Bards and Bush Reviewers,” and instead of humorous they are ridiculous:—

If you sing of waving grasses where the plains are dry as bricks,
And discover shining rivers where there's only mud and sticks;
If you picture “mighty forests” where the mulga spoils the view—
You're superior to Kendall, and ahead of Gordon too.

Two British poems containing suggestions of the metre are the Hon. Mrs. Norton's “Bingen on the Rhine,” and S. Ferguson's Irish ballad “The Fairy Thorn.” A stanza from each follows:—

A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers—
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him while his life-blood ebb'd away,
And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say.
The dying soldier falter'd, as he took that comrade's hand,
And he said. “I never more shall see my own, my native land;
Take a message and a token to some distant friends of mine,
For I was born at Bingen—at Bingen on the Rhine.”
They're glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve,
Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare;
The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave,
And the crags in the ghostly air.

Scott has a rare example of the metre appearing in three-syllabled surroundings:—

He is gòne on the mountain,
He is lòst to the fòrest.
Like a sùmmer-dried fòuntain,
When our nèed was the sòrest.
The fòunt reappèaring
From the ràin-drops shall bòrrow,
But to ùs comes no chèering,
To Duncan no mòrrow!

When found in three-syllabled metres its existence can be shown to be accidental rather than intentional. The poet has made feminine or weak rimes at the half-line or line-endings, as in the example given, and, an anapest following, a four-syllabled unit results. A line from the Irish ballad “Mary le More” shows this:

As I strày'd o'er the còmmon on Còrk's rugged bòrder,
While the dèw-drops of mòrn the sweet primrose arrày'd.