It was not until 1845 that the first genuine, though crude,
Australian poetry appeared, in the form of a small volume of sonnets
by Charles Harpur, who was born at Windsor, N.S.W., in 1817.
He passed his best years in the lonely bush, and wrote largely
under the influence of Wordsworth and Shelley. He had some
imagination and poetic faculty of the contemplative order,
but the disadvantages of his life were many. Harpur's best work
is in his longer poems, from which extracts cannot conveniently be given here.
The year 1842 had seen the publication of Henry Parkes' "Stolen Moments",
the first of a number of volumes of verse which that statesman bravely issued,
the last being published just before his eightieth year. The career of Parkes
is coincident with a long and important period of our history,
in which he is the most striking figure. Not the least interesting
aspect of his character, which contained much of rugged greatness,
was his love of poetry and his unfailing kindness to the struggling writers
of the colony.
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