John Hurst: Federation Poetry

 

 

 

In looking for the motives for Australian federation, historians usually are far too

instrumental in their thinking. The Commonwealth government was given power over

various subjects and the puzzle of why federation occurred is reduced to ranking these

in order of importance. Was federation chiefly to secure a customs union, or a united

immigration policy, or a national defence? To federalists none of these things was

sacred; the whole 42 powers given to the Commonwealth did not together make

federation sacred. It was the making ofthe nation, apart from anything it might do,

which was sacred.Because federation was a sacred cause, poetry was considered the most appropriate

medium to express its rationale and purposes. It was poetry’s role to deal with what

was noble, profound, and elevating. There are innumerable federation poems by

hundreds of different hands.

2

The nation was born in a festival of poetry. Historians

have noticed the poems, but haven’t quite known what to do with them. Most of them

are valueless as poetry. One leading scholar who produced a bibliography of

federation sources decided that it would be kinder to his readers to leave it all out. He

thus removed from consideration the best guide to the ideas and ideals which inspired

the movement. You are not to be spared, but I will be very selective in my quotations.

The poets considered that God or destiny intended Australia to be a nation. The

evidence for this was in the first place physical. They forgot Tasmania (which was

inconsiderate since it was always keen about federation) and saw the nation-to-be as a

single geographical unit, a whole continent with only natural boundaries. This was a

special benediction. Other nations had man-made frontiers; Australia’s were the sea.

A common word for the sea in this role was ‘girdle’ and in its verbal form ‘girdled’ or

‘girdling’ or ‘girt’. ‘Advance Australia Fair’, written by Peter McCormick in 1878

and now the national anthem, uses ‘girt’ and assumes the implications of the sea

boundary do not have to be spelled out, recording merely ‘our home is girt by sea’.

The social uniformity within the continent also marked out Australia for nationhood.

The people were of one blood or stock or race; they spoke the same language; they

shared a glorious heritage (Britain’s), the most celebrated part of which was political

freedom which had been extended in Australia to all men so that the country was the

freest on earth. The best federation poem, written very early (1877), does not argue that Australia

should be one, but assumes it and deals instead with the ideal becoming real. It is the

most powerful expression of the idea that union was Australia’s destiny. The author

was James Brunton Stephens, a headmaster at a Brisbane state school.

2

The poems are scattered through newspapers, periodicals and sheet music; collections are found in

‘Federation Songs’, an exercise book of newspaper cuttings, created by J. Plummer, in the Mitchell

Library at QA 821.08/35; ‘Literature on Federation’, National Library MS 5911; Australasian Federation League of Victoria, Songs of Union, Melbourne, 1899, held in Deakin Papers in the

National Library, MS 1540/11/172,178; for a listing of songs see Georgina M. Binns, ‘Patriotic and

nationalistic song in Australia to 1919: a study of the popular sheet music genre’, Master of Music

thesis, University of Melbourne, 1988.

 

 

His federation poem was called ‘The Dominion of Australia: A Forecast’:

 

She is not yet; but he whose ear

Thrills to that finer atmosphere

Where footfalls of appointed things,

Reverberant of days to be,

Are heard in forecast echoings

Like wave-beats from a viewless sea,

Hears in the voiceful tremors of the sky

Auroral heralds whispering, ‘She is nigh’.

 

The middle part of the poem develops an elaborate comparison

between the silent force carrying Australia to its destiny and

the underground rivers which some experts assumed must run under the parched lands of

the outback and which one day might be released to make the desert bloom:

 

So flows beneath our good and ill

A viewless stream of Common Will,

A gathering force, a present might,

That from its silent depths of gloom

At Wisdom’s voice shall leap to light

And hide our barren feuds in bloom,

Till, all our sundering lines with love o’ergrown,

Our bounds shall be the girdling seas alone.

 

When Parkes opened his campaign for federation in his famous speech at Tenterfield,

he quoted from this poem.

3

He did well to quote from Stephens’ poetry rather than his own. At the time he launched his campaign

he was revising the proofs of his next book of poems, Fragmentary Thoughts.

In the preface he said with his usual mock humility that he would be happy to be judged no great poet, but lest anyone dare to make that judgement he reproduced a letter from his friend Lord Tennyson which

praised his efforts, how guardedly Parkes probably did not notice. In Brisbane a few days before his Tenterfield speech, he had refused to disclose his federal plans to the Courier's reporter but had been very willing to discuss poetry.

4

He passed the proofs of his poems to the journalist for his opinion. He declared Stephens to be the best poet

in Australia, a compliment Stephens returned in his review of Fragmentary Thoughts which contrived to be favourable without pronouncing definitely on the quality of the poems.

 

If you're interested you can continue exploring the Historical work of John Hurst

This paper was presented as a lecture in the Department of the Senate Occasional Lecture Series at

Parliament House on 21 July 2000.