Introduction



As the literature of a country is, in certain respects,
a reflex of its character, it may be advisable to introduce this Anthology
with some account of the main circumstances which have affected
the production of Australian poetry.

Australia was first settled by the British a little more than a century ago,
so that we are still a young community. The present population,
including that of New Zealand, is a little under five millions,
or about the same as that of London; it is chiefly scattered
along the coast and the few permanent waterways, and a vast central region
is but sparsely inhabited as yet. All climates, from tropical to frigid,
are included within the continent, but the want of satisfactory watersheds
renders it peculiarly liable to long droughts and sudden floods.
The absence of those broad, outward signs of the changing seasons
which mark the pageant of the year in the old world is probably
a greater disadvantage than we are apt to suspect. Here, too,
have existed hardly any of the conditions which obtained in older communities
where great literature arose. There is no glamour of old Romance
about our early history, no shading off from the actual
into a dim region of myth and fable; our beginnings are clearly defined
and of an eminently prosaic character. The early settlers were engaged
in a hand-to-hand struggle with nature, and in the establishment