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But where, save in the retrospect of 'The Sick Stockrider' and a verse or two of 'From the Wreck, shall we find any of the air of the lovely, transient Australian spring? And the galloping rhymes? Yes, there is indeed one galloping rhyme 'How we beat the Favourite' with a ring and a rush, a spirit and swiftness of colour, not approached by the best verse of Egerton Warburton or Whyte-Melville.
My visit being ended and the weather favourable, I proceeded to Christchurch preparatory to resuming work. I was accompanied by a young man named Evans, a stockrider from one of the Ashburton stations, and on arriving at the Rakaia, being in a hurry, we foolishly tried to ford the river without a guide, as I had frequently done at other times.
The sergeant was an old stockrider, and he one day so far forgot the rules of discipline as to indulge in a mutinous smile, and say: "Well, captain, you may know something about a ship, but I'll be blowed if you know anything about a horse." That observation was not entered in any report, but the sergeant was fined 2 pounds for "insolence and insubordination."
Curiously enough it made me think of Gordon and "The Sick Stockrider" it must have been floating through my mind when I began to talk and it needed very little effort of imagination to see The deep blue skies wax dusky and the tall green trees grow dim, And the sickly, smoky shadows through the sleepy sunlight swim, And on the very sun's face weave their pall,
Both are to be cultivated and admired, and when the latter dies needlessly, as at Balaclava, we are to be none the less proud of him, 'As a type of our chivalry. Of the longer poems, the two best in artistic quality are 'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde' and 'The Sick Stockrider. They afford a complete contrast in subject, tone and treatment. The old Arthurian story is the finer and more finished.
Had he not ridden as well as written the rides related by his 'Sick Stockrider, he might have been foremost in that more glorious one so often present to his fiery fancy, and have wielded 'The splendid bare sword Flashing blue, rising red from the blow!
In a dedication prefixed to the Bush Ballads, Gordon suggests some of the local sources of his inspiration. He obviously overstates his obligations to the country. Some of the best of the poems in this, the most characteristic collection of his work, have no association with it whatever. 'The Sick Stockrider, 'From the Wreck, and 'Wolf and Hound' are colonial experiences, finely described.
I've seen a stockrider, when all the horses were dead beat, trying to get fat cattle to take a river in flood, jump off and turn his horse loose into the stream. If he went straight, and swam across, all the cattle would follow him like sheep.
"Harry" was a splendid specimen of humanity. Tall, lithesome, handsome, intelligent, proud of superior abilities, prouder of his style. In his time he played many parts. A stockrider, when he would appear in a gay shirt, tight white moleskins, cabbage-tree hat, flash riding-boots with glittering spurs.
The Jack Tar just arrived from the bush or some up-country station with a cheque for a year's wages, bent on a spree, and standing drinks all round while his money lasted, the Scottish shepherd plying liquor and grasping hands for "Auld Lang Syne," the wretched debauched crawler, the villainous-looking "lag" from "t'other side," the bullock puncher, whose every alternate word was a profane oath, the stockrider, in his guernsey shirt and knee boots with stockwhip thrown over his shoulder, engaging the attention of those who would listen with some miraculous story of his exploits, mine host smilingly dealing out the fiery poison, with now and again the presence of the dripping forder from the river, come in for his glass of grog and pipe before resuming his perilous occupation.
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