Any polite biography would have to list
Barron Field as lawyer, poet and scientist. He was a passable lawyer, most of
the time, and well-informed on matters of science. His poetry was another
matter, though there were some in England who admired what others called mere
doggerel.
Still, when he published his First Fruits of Australian Poetry in
Sydney in 1819, these were the first alleged Australian poems to appear in
book form. When Barron Field edited and published his Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales [1] in 1825, it included two
chapters (chapters 6 and 13) by Allan Cunningham. So Field could mix it with
the best when it came to the sciences.
Yet if he was a passable scientist,
Field was less skilled at taking Australian animal life into poetry. I cannot
bring myself to offer more than one verse of his Kangaroo, which surely eclipses anything written by Erasmus Darwin
or William McGonagall. We would get good poets in due course, but it would take time.
Kangaroo
Kangaroo
To describe thee, it is hard:
Converse of the cameleopard,
Which beginneth camel-wise,
But endeth of the panther-size,
Thy fore half, it would appear,
Had belong’d to some “small deer,”
Such as liveth in a tree;
By thy hinder, thou should’st be
A large animal of chace,
Bounding o’er the forest’s space;-
Join’d by some divine mistake,
None but Nature’s hand can make-
Nature, in her wisdom’s play,
On
Creation’s holiday.
— Barron
Field
The problem for Australia’s earliest poets,
Robinson, Field and Wentworth, at least, was that they were English-educated
gentlemen, and their imagery had English roots. Still, Field did a decent job
in two sonnets on Australian historical themes:
Kurnell
Note: In this sonnet, the barrack tow’r is the fort at Bare Island on Botany Bay.
I have been musing what our Banks
had said
And Cook, had they had second sight,
that here
(Where fifty years ago the first
they were
Of voyagers, whose feet did ever
tread
These savage shores) - that here on
this south head
Should stand an English farm-hut;
and that there
On yon north shore, a barrack tow’r should peer;
Still more had they this simple
Tablet read,
Erected by their own compatriots
born,
Colonists here of a discordant
state,
Yet big with virtues (though the
flow’ry name
Which Science left it, has become a
scorn
And hissing to the nations), if our
Great
Be Wise and
Good. So fairest Rome became!
— Barron
Field
On
visiting the spot where Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks first landed in
Botany Bay.
Here fix the tablet. This must be
the place
Where our Columbus of the South did
land.
He saw the Indian village on that
sand
And on this rock first met the
simple race
Of Austral Indians who presumed to
face
With lance and spear his musket.
Close at hand
Is the clear stream from which his
vent’rous band
Refreshed their ship; and thence a
little space
Lies Sutherland, their shipmate; for
the sound
Of Christian burial better did
proclaim
Possession than the flag, in
England’s name.
These were the commelinae Banks
first found;
But where’s the tree, with the
ship’s wood-carved fame?
Fix, then,
the Ephesian brass — ‘tis classic ground!
— Barron
Field
One thing that people notice about Field is
his name, which must provoke the question: what were his parents thinking? The
answer is simple: they were thinking of his mother’s maiden name: she was born
Esther Barron.
[1]
Barron Field (ed.), Geographical Memoirs
on New South Wales by various hands. London: John Murray, 1825. https://books.google.com/books?id=zHk9AAAAcAAJ
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