Poems

Note 1—Page 4. The God of Abraham.

THE Patriarch Abraham was originally an idolater, and worshipped strange gods, in common with the rest of his family, on this side the river Euphrates. At length, however, he was divinely called to the knowledge and worship of the true God, and directed to emigrate to the westward, and settle in the land of Canaan. Asiatic tradition represents him to have belonged to the seet of the Sabians, who worshipped the sun, moon, and stars, and of whom an interesting account is given in the learned treatise of Hyde, De Religione Veterum Persarum. As the Author does not possess a copy of that treatise, in which he recollects having seen the original tradition on which the poem in the text is founded, be refers the reader to the following extract from the Koran of Mahomet, who copied the story from the Jewish Talmud:—

“Call to mind when Abraham said unto his father Azer, Dost thou take images for Gods? Verily I perceive that thou and thy people are in a manifest error. And thus did we show unto Abraham the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth, that he might become one of those who firmly believe. And when the night overshadowed him, he saw a Star, and he said. This is my Lord; and when it set, he said, I like not Gods which set. And when he saw the Moon rising, he said, This is my Lord; but when he saw it set, he said, Verily, if my Lord direct me not, I shall become one of the people who go astray. Andwhen he saw the Sun rising, he said, This is my Lord; this is the greatest; but when he saw it set, he said, O my people, verily I am clear from that which ye associate with God; I direct my face unto him who hath created the Heavens and the Earth. I am orthodox, and am not one of the idolaters.”— Koran, chap. iv.

Note 2—Page 22. Elijah's Appeal.

In the year 1824, the Colony of New South Wales was almost reduced to the miseries of famine: wheat having risen, in the course of a few months, from four to twenty-five shillings a bushel. The scarcity arose partly from the failure of the crop, and partly from an improvident expenditure of grain at the commencement of the season.

Note 3—Page 28. Still Life.—From the Greek of Anacreon.

The idea in the two last lines is the only one in this little piece that is not Anacreon's. It was added to give it somewhat of a Christian character.

Gyges, King of Sardis, a city in Asia Minor, which was afterwards the seat of one of the Apostolic Churches, was famous for his immense wealth.

Note 4—Page 29. Luther's Soliloquy.

This piece was suggested by the following passage in one of the nervous epistles of the great Reformer, written immediately after he was excommunicated by the Roman Pontiff, and delivered over to the Secular power. It merely embodies his own sentiments, and clothes them in a poetical dress:—

“A me quidem jacta mihi alca, contemptus est Romanusfuror et favor; nolo eis reconciliari nec communicare in perpetuum; damnent exurantque mea.”—Luther, Epist. ap. Seckendorf.

The Rubicon was the boundary of Julius Cæsar's government in ancient Gaul. In crossing that stream, therefore, with his victorious legions, and without the sanction of the Roman Senate, Cæsar proclaimed war against his country. The difference, however, between the case of Cæsar and that of Luther is obvious. In the former, the liberties of Rome were sacrificed to the boundless ambition of an unprincipled usurper; in the latter, a crusade was commenced by a single individual against a system of universal usurpation, and the liberties of the world were in consequence restored.

The famous Carthaginian General, Hannibal, was led to the altar by his father Hamilcar, when only nine years of age, and made to swear that he would never make peace with the Romans, with whom his country was then at war.

Note 5—Page 38. To Lady Brisbane.

The Author would be sorry to prostitute his office, as a Minister of the Gospel, by holding forth the hopes of a blissful immortality to any who had nought but their earthly rank to recommend them to a heavenly crown. From the little, however, that he knew of Sir James Brisbane, he has good reason to believe that his hopes, in that important respect, were well founded, and that he has at length been enabled, through the great Captain of our Salvation, to overcome the Christian's last enemy, and to obtain the victory over death and hell. At all events, he gave the Author distinctly to understand, during the only conversation he ever had with him, that his hopes, in reference to futurity, were not founded on his own righteousness, but on the sure foundation of Christianity, the merits and sacrifice of JesusChrist. Christianity, doubtless, is not subject to the law of entail; but the Author may be allowed to remark that during the last two centuries a considerable number of eminently pious individuals have sprung from the family of Brisbane, among whom may be reckoned several very faithful and zealous Ministers of the Church of Scotland.

Note 6—Page 47. Sonnet—The Friendship of the World.

Suggested by a medical gentleman's observing, in the course of conversation with the Author, that his college acquaintances scarcely knew him on his return to Scotland, after a four years' absence in the Mediterranean, and had all forgotten their youthful promises of lasting friendship. It is doubtless a common case, though the Author has seen exceptions to the general rule.

Note 7—Page 48. Lament of Mattathias.

Mattathias was the father of Judas Maccabeus, the deliverer of the Jews from the oppressive yoke of the Syro-Grecian Monarchs, the successors of Alexander the Great in the kingdom of Syria. About 170 years before the birth of Christ, Antiochus Epiphanes, the eighth of these monarchs, published an edict, requiring uniformity of religious worship throughout his dominions; which, in order to gratify his personal antipathy towards the Jewish nation and the worship of Jehovah, he appointed commissioners to carry into rigorous execution in the province of Judea. One of these commissioners, Apelles by name, came to Modin, a city of Judea, in which Mattathias, then an aged priest, resided with his five sons. Zealous for the law of God, and filled with indignation at the forcible establishment of idolatrous worship, Mattathias and his five sons fell upon the king's commissioner, as he was exhorting the people to offer sacrifice to idols, and slew him. They then fled to themountains, where they soon collected a considerable band of followers, which, under the command of Judas Maccabeus, performed a series of most heroic exploits, and finally overthrew the Syrian power, re-established the worship of Jehovah, and erected an independent government in Judea. The appropriate motto which Judas and his followers chose, in their patriotic stand for the worship of Jehovah and the liberties of their country, was these words in Exodus 15. 11.—“Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods?”—the initial letters of which, in the Hebrew, viz. M. K. B. I. being inscribed on the military standard, formed the word Makabi or Maccabee, which afterwards became the honourable designation of Mattathias and his posterity.

Note 8—Page 53. Verses to the Memory of George Kilpatrick, ESQ.

Mr. Kilpatrick was a fellow-student of the Author's, at Glasgow College, where he received a superior medical and general education. He was a young man of uncommon promise, and of a most adventurous spirit—ardently attached to scientific pursuits, and cherishing the strongest feelings of genuine philanthropy. On receiving intelligence of the Neapolitan revolution, shortly after the completion of his medical studies, he left Scotland with another medical gentleman, who is now in His Majesty's Service in India, to join General Pepe and the Constitutionalists of 1820. On arriving at Naples, however, he found that a counter-revolution had been effected, in consequence of which the Austrian power was universally predominant. He, therefore, shaped his course towards Rome, where he spent some time in examining the remains of antiquity in that ancient city, and where he narrowly escaped a classical death, in swimming across the Tiber. From thence he walked over the Alps to Chamberri, in France; and both he and his fellowtraveller, shortly afterwards, embarked from London for India.Having spent some time in Bengal, where he formed an extensive and valuable collection of specimens in Botany, Mineralogy, and Ornithology, Mr. K. was returning to Europe, when he was unfortunately ship-wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope, losing all his property, and having all his hopes suddenly blasted. In this unenviable situation, he volunteered to accompany the expedition which the Lords of the Admiralty had fitted out to explore the river Zambese, on the southeast coast of Africa; and his services being cheerfully accepted, he proceeded on the expedition. But all his companions, with the exception of one solitary individual who returned with the tidings, having successively fallen victims to the fever of the country, the circumstance preyed upon his spirits and threw him into the same fever, of which he died in the house of a Portuguese lady of rank, by whom the expedition had been very hospitably received, in the settlement of Mozambiquc.

Mr. Kilpatrick is buried under a Baobab tree in the settlement of Shupanga, on the Zambese River; and the remains of Mrs. Livingstone, the wife of the famous missionary and traveller, Dr. Livingstone, who died in that settlement about forty years thereafter, are interred alongside his grave.

Note 9—Page 55. Lux in Tenebris.

The phenomenon, alluded to in these verses, is well known to all who have been at sea, especially in the intertropical regions. During a squall in these regions, in a very dark night, the scene is peculiarly grand.

Note 10—Page 63. The Albatross.

The Albatross is a well-known and very interesting inhabitant of the higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. He will accompany a vessel for weeks together, subsisting on theoffals that are thrown overboard, or on whatever else he may pick up from the surface of the water. At the approach of summer the Albatross makes for the land—generally some barren island in the great Southern Ocean—where he rears a youthful progeny which he carries with him to sea on the return of winter. The Author has seen one of these majestic birds measure eleven feet nine inches from the tip of the one wing to that of the other.

Note 11—Page 68. Verses to Mr. George Lang.

Mr. George Lang, the Author's brother, was educated at the University of Glasgow. He was induced to emigrate to New South Wales by the assurance of patronage and support from His Excellency Sir Thomas Brisbane, to whose immediate neighbourhood he belonged; and immediately on his arrival in this country he had the honour of receiving a grant of 400 acres of land, without previous solicitation of any kind, from His Excellency Governor Macquarie. A few months thereafter he received from the Deputy-Commissary-General an appointment in the Commissariat Department, which he held till after the Author's return to Europe in 1824. During the Author's absence from the colony, however, he died in Sydney, of an inflammatory fever, on the 18th of January, 1825, aged 23 years, and was buried in the Scots Church by permission of His Excellency Sir Thomas Brisbane—his parents, who had arrived in the Colony in January, 1824, being unwilling that the Church of England service should be read over his grave.

Note 12—Page 72. Verses to the Memory of Mr. George Lang.

The Author's forefathers, who were Scotch farmers, were obliged, in common with many more of their countrymen to flee from their native land for righteousness' sake, during theviolent persecution to which the Scots Presbyterians were subjected, in the reign of Charles the Second. They obtained a temporary asylum in Holland, from whence they returned to Scotland at the revolution of 1688.

Note 13—Page 74. Gloria Deo, or the Coral Insect.

It is a well known fact that many of the islands, and most of the extensive reefs, in the intertropical regions of the great Pacific Ocean, have been the work of the Coral Insect—an animalculæ scarcely visible to the naked eye. The island of Tonga Taboo, one of the Friendly Islands, which at present contains upwards of 10,000 inhabitants, is a specimen of the architectural abilities of this most wonderful of Nature's agents. It is a complete mass of coral, and is as level as a bowling-green. On a calm evening myriads of these animalculæ float on the surface of the water, along the whole extent of the reefs they are employed in constructing, communicating to the sea a beautiful purple colour. When disturbed, however, they return to their well-built cabins under water, and the sea resumes its cerulean hue. Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty! in wisdom hast thou made them all!

Note 14—Page 77. The Magellan Clouds.

The Magellan Clouds are two beautiful nebulæ, in the Southern Hemisphere, so named from the Portuguese circumnavigator Magelhaens. The luminous appearance they exhibit arises from innumerable clusters of stars.

Note 15—Page 81. New Year's Day.

The commencement of a New Year is universally hailed throughout Scotland with demonstrations of joy. Warm gratulationsand kindly wishes are mutually interchanged by people of all ranks; while enthusiasts for the customs of the olden time circulate the juice of the Scottish grape much more freely than is deemed convenient at other seasons.

Note 16—Page 83. Verses on the Ruins of Knock Castle.

The Ruins of Knock Castle are situated in the parish of Largs, in the west of Scotland, on the patrimonial estate of Sir Thomas Brisbane. The situation is beautifully picturesque; and the circumstance of the famous battle of Largs, having been fought in its immediate vicinity, renders it doubly interesting. The battle of Largs, which secured the independence of Scotland, and delivered the Scottish nation from the fear of Danish and Norwegian invasion, was fought between Alexander III., king of Scotland, and Hacho, king of Norway, in the year 1263. History informs us, that nearly twenty thousand combatants fell in the battle. At all events, Hacho was completely routed. His nephew, who lies buried at Largs, was slain; and he himself, in returning to Norway, died at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, of a broken heart.

Note 17—Page 86. Ode to Glasgow College.

The University of Glasgow was founded in the year 1440. It was of very little note, however, till after the Reformation, when it was entirely remodelled by the learned and zealous reformer, Andrew Melville, in conjunction with the elegant historian and poet, George Buchanan, who framed its laws and bequeathed to it his library. Since the Reformation it has produced many eminent men, among whom the celebrated names of Dr. Reid and Adam Smith, who were both professors of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, are not the least conspicuous.

The University of Glasgow consists of a Chancellor (the Duke of Montrose), a Lord Rector (an office once held by the eloquent Mr. Burke), a Principal, and about twenty Professors in the various departments of Theology, Philosophy, Law, Medicine, Mathematics, Language, &c. The number of students varies from a thousand to fifteen hundred. The course of study prescribed for Ministers of the Church of Scotland, at the Scotch Universities, in addition to a previous course of tuition in the Latin language, embraces a period of eight years; the first four of which are devoted to the study of the learned languages, Logic, Moral Philosophy, Natural Philosophy and Mathematics; and the last four to the study of Theology, Church History and the Oriental Tongues. Most of the Theological Students, however, embrace the opportunity afforded them of attending other classes besides those prescribed by the Church, such as Anatomy, Chemistry, Natural History, Botany, Mineralogy, Astronomy, &c.

Note 18—Page 88.

Paracelsus, an eminent Physician, who lived in the dark ages, and whose history is involved in some obscurity, is generally represented as a mere Alchymist, who wasted his time and talents in the fruitless search for the Philosopher's Stone and the Universal Elixir; the possessor of which was to become immortal, and to be able to transmute the baser metals into gold. He may justly be regarded, however, as the father of the modern science of Chemistry.

Note 19—Page 90.

The Rev. Messrs. Martin and MacLean are ministers of Scots Churches in British America. Mr. Sutherland is one of the Colonial Dutch Presbyterian Chaplains at the Cape of Good Hope. Mr. Steele was lately Minister of the Scots Church, Kingston, Jamaica. Mr. Stevenson, who relinquished a veryeligible settlement in Scotland to become a missionary to the heathen, is now acting in that capacity under the Scottish Missionary Society at Bombay. Messrs. Thomson and Ross are Missionaries; and Messrs. Brownlce and Bennie are Catechists, under the Glasgow Missionary Society, in Kaffirland, South Africa.

Note 20—Page 90.

The Rev. James Steele, A. M., late Minister of the Scots Church, Kingston, Jamaica, was a candidate along with the Author at the University of Glasgow, for a prize for the best Essay on Hebrew Criticism. The judges, to whom the Essays were submitted, could not decide as to which deserved the prize, and consequently two prizes were given instead of one. Mr. S. was a young man of superior talent and of the most amiable disposition. He fell a victim to his zeal in the service of his Master, having caught the fever of the Island in the discharge of his Ministerial duties. He died about a year after his settlement, deeply regretted by the numerous Scotch inhabitants of Jamaica.

Note 21—Page 92. Hymn—from the German of Gellert.

As this Hymn is rather long and diffuse in the original German, the Author has taken the liberty to compress it considerably, so that his version is rather a condensation than a translation. He has used the same freedom, and for the same reason, with the four last verses of the Hymn for the Sabbath. In the other pieces he has adhered as closely as possible to the original.

Note 22—Page 100. Epinikion.

Sanballat, the Horonite, Satrap of the province of Samaria, under the kings of Persia, and his deputy Tobiah, the Ammonite,manifested a very hostile spirit towards the Jewish people when rebuilding the Temple and the walls of Jerusalem, after their return from the Babylonish captivity. At first, indeed, they professed great friendship towards the Jews, and offered to assist them in their pious undertaking; but the latter, discovering their hostile intentions, firmly declined their assistance and carried on the building themselves. Sanballat used every effort to hinder the work, sending injurious representations to the King of Persia respecting the Jews; secretly endeavouring to foment divisions among themselves and to alienate their affections from Nehemiah the Governor; and keeping them in a state of perpetual alarm by open hostilities. In these circumstances, their perilous situation is feelingly depicted by the sacred historian in the following artless narrative:—

“It came to pass, that when Sanballat and Tobiah, and the Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, heard that the walls of Jerusalem were made up, and that the breaches began to be stopped, then they were very wroth, and conspired all of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder it. Nevertheless we made our prayers unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night. And it came to pass from that time forth that the half of my servants wrought in the work, and the other half of them held both the spears, the shields, and the bows, and the habergeons. They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon. For the builders, every one, had his sword girded by his side, and so builded. So we laboured in the work. And half of them held the spears from the rising of the morning till the stars appeared. Neither I, nor my brethren, nor my servants, nor the men of the guard which followed me—none of us put off our clothes, saving that every one put them off for washing.”—Nehemiah, chap. iv.

Note 23—Page 127. The Irish Stew.

In the year 1835, the late Sir Richard Bourke, who was then Governor of New South Wales, was strongly in favour of the Irish National system of Education which, having previously obtained the approval of Lord Glenelg, then Secretary of State for the colonies, he earnestly desired and endeavoured to establish throughout that colony. The Roman Catholic priests, however, and their Vicar-General, the Revd. Dr. Ullathorne, now, I believe, Roman Catholic bishop of Birmingham, strongly advocated the Governor's proposal, and agitated with all their might for the establishment of the Irish National system. But the Protestants generally, of all denominations, and perhaps the more strongly for that very reason, were dead against it; the British and Foreign system, so long advocated and supported by Lord John Russell, in which the Holy Scriptures are daily read in the schools, without note or comment, being greatly preferred by the Protestant community.

When the agitation as to which system of national education —the Irish or the British and Foreign—should be established, was at its height, “The Irish Stew” was published, in a Journal I superintended, and was amazingly popular at the time; serving as it did, in a great measure, to give the quietus to the Irish system for the time.

No sooner, however, had that system been put down by the Protestants of the Colony, than the late Rev. Dr. Broughton, the Anglican bishop, who had been acting with apparent cordiality with the other Protestants all along—so long indeed as it was necessary to get rid of the Irish system—drew back and insisted upon having a system of national education in exclusiveaccordance with the views and practice of the Church of England. Perceiving, therefore, that there was just as little prospect as ever of a general or national system of education for the colony. I identified myself thenceforward, as a member of our colonial Parliament, first with the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, who was then a nominee member of our legislature, but a zealous advocate of a really national system of education,* and afterwards with the Honourable Henry Parkes, the present premier, under whom the famous Public Schools Act of New South Wales, affording as it does a noble system of general education, was finally passed in the year 1864.

The remarkable circumstance in the whole case is that while the Roman Catholics were the advocates, and the Protestants of the colony the opponents, of the Irish National system, in the year 1835, the Protestants are now the advocates of that system—at least of one virtually identical with it—and the Roman Catholics its bitter opponents.

Edward Smith Hall, editor of the Monitor, a radical paper of extreme views. The other two editors—two attornies—had been advocating the amalgamation of the bar, a question which had then been just decided against them.

The head of the Normal Institution was the Rev. Henry Carmichael, A.M., subsequently LL.D., whom I had brought out in 1831, for an educational institution in the colony. He was a zealous and rather extreme advocate of the Irish system

Note 24—Page 143. Crossing the Line.

About fifty years ago there was a practice in very general use, in vessels crossing the line, which has since, I believe,been generally, if not entirely, discontinued, from its having been not unfrequently greatly abused. It was that of shaving, or pretending to shave, those of the passengers and crew who had not crossed the line before. On these occasions a tar-barrel is set on fire and lowered down into the sea from the bow of the vessel during the evening preceding the ceremony. The vessel is then pretended to be hailed in the darkness, from the blazing barrel, by Neptune, usually represented by the boatswain, to whom the captain replies and gives him the news from England; Neptune promising to come on board next day, to ascertain who have not crossed the line before, and to admit them into his domain. He comes on board accordingly, with Thetis and his Tritons, very rudely but quaintly equipped. Neptune is then supposed to be privileged, not only to shave any male passenger or sailor who is crossing the line for the first time, but to administer a personal salute to any young lady whose curiosity may have got the better of her discretion by coming on deck to witness the ceremony.

Note 25—Page 144. Rio Janeiro.

Our vessel had arrived at Rio Janeiro, which was then a frequent port of call for vessels bound to New South Wales, towards the close of January, 1823. A revolution had occurred in the Brazils only a few days before; and the modest triumphal arches of canvas, with the legend, “Independencia o' Morte” (Independence or Death), which had been stretched across the principal streets to celebrate the event, were still standing. Don Pedro, the eldest son of the king of Portugal, had very wisely thrown himself into the movement, and was proclaimed Emperor of the Brazils; thereby renouncing his right to thethrone of Portugal in favour, however, of his daughter Maria da Gloria; for whom the Pope subsequently granted a dispensation for her marriage with her uncle, Don Miguel, who was then to be proclaimed king of Portugal. So auspicious was the occasion deemed, that the British Government of the day, setting aside the laws of God to oblige an ancient ally, actually sent out a minister to promote the happy union. But Don Miguel had a mind of his own; and claiming the kingdom in his own right, refused to be indebted for it to his niece or to have her on any terms, and hence another revolution—in Portugal this time.

Note 26—Page 156. A Peep at Government House, Parramatta.

Lest I should be supposed to have drawn an unwarrantable picture of Sir Thomas Brisbane's government in these verses. I would appeal to the opinion of the colonial public of the day in confirmation of the representation I have given, as unmistakably expressed in the following song, which was composed to be said or sung at the celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the colony, on the 26th of January, 1824. It is alleged to have been the production of Michael Robinson, Governor Macquarie's Poet Laureate of New South Wales.*

The real autocrat of the colony at the time was Major Goulburn, the Colonial Secretary, who had made both himself and the Governor exceedingly unpopular. Captain Fennell was his Excellency's Aide-de-camp, and Herr Rumker, who had been a teacher of navigation in Hamburgh, was the Viceregal Astronomer. Rumker was rude, self-willed, and exacting in his way, and he had had a dispute at the time with Major Goulburn about his grant of land and allowances, which led him to strike work as an astronomer.

The officers of the regiment then stationed in Sydney, the 3rd Regiment, or Buffs, had his Excellency also caricatured at the time in a drawing representing Sir Thomas led blindfold in a chain by Major Goulburn, and requesting light to observe that star.

Note 27—Page 158. The Female Convict's Death.

This was scarcely an exaggerated picture of the scene which the South Head Road, and the ground now forming the water-reserve of Sydney, with its many dismal swamps, presented to the eye of a recent arrival half a century ago. There had been an extensive fire shortly before among the native shrubbery the place; the blackened stems of which, contrasting with the barrenness of the soil from which they sprang, gave a peculiarly dismal aspect to the scene.

Note 28—Page 161. Judge Field a Poet, and “Botany Bay Flowers.”

Barron Field, Esq., was the Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales—or, as he modestly styled himself, “The Supreme Judge”—fifty years since. He was a weak silly man, and fancied himself a poet born; in proof of which he published certain of his pieces in a collection which he entitled “Botany Bay Flowers.” I am sorry I have been unable to procure a copy of his “Flowers.” One of them, however, I recollect, was an Address to the Kangaroo commencing

“Kangaroo, Kangaroo,
Spirit of Australia!”