A Death in the Bush

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"A Death in the Bush" 
by Henry Kendall
Written 1868
First published inWilliams's Illustrated Australian Annual
Country Australia
Language English
Publication date Christmas, 1868
Preceded by "In the Valley"
Followed by "Syrinx"
Read online "A Death in the Bush" at Wikisource

"A Death in the Bush" (1868) is a long narrative poem by Australian poet Henry Kendall. It was originally published in the 1868 edition of Williams's Illustrated Australian Annual, and later appeared in the author's collection Leaves from Australian Forests (1869). [1]

Henry Kendall (poet) Australian author and bush poet

Thomas Henry Kendall publishing as Henry Kendall, was an Australian author and bush poet, who was particularly known for his poems and tales set in a natural environment setting.

Leaves from Australian Forests (1869) is the second collection of poems by Australian poet Henry Kendall. It was released in hardback by George Robertson in 1869, and features the poet's widely anthologised poems "Bell-Birds", "The Hut by the Black Swamp", and "The Last of His Tribe". It also contains the poet's works dedicated to the memories of fellow writer Charles Harpur and Daniel Henry Deniehy.

Contents

Outline

The poem is another of Kendall's poems about melancholy aspects of Australian bush life. The poem describes the lonely death of a shepherd in the bush, alone except for his patient wife. After word of the man's death spreads people start arriving "to see their neighbour and to bury him."

Reviews

When reviewing Leaves from Australian Forests in The Weekly Times a writer noted that "Mr. Kendall has a few more ambitious efforts, mostly in blank verse; but, although his verse is good, it is too redolent of Tennyson, and we cannot place these pieces on a level with his true and very welcome Australian lyrics. We must except, however, "A death in the bush," which has some true and pathetic touches." [2]

Commenting on Henry Kendall's poetry and the crisis of faith in the mid-1880s Michael Ackland stated: "“A Death in the Bush”, like “The Glen of Arawatta”, tries to defend the salving notion of surviving “Love in Death”. Here again, however, the dramatization of grounds for doubt is imaginatively more persuasive than the concluding plea for faith maintained in a far away order. The wasted settler, brought to the verge of death by disease, exclaims feverishly “Where is God? — it is bitter cold”. But no supernatural help is forthcoming for him or his widow, who is left without “The faintest token of Divinity / In this my latest sorrow”. [3]

Further publications

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. ↑ Austlit - "A Death in the Bush" by Henry Kendall
  2. ↑ "Mr. Kendall's Poems", The Weekly Times, 9 October 1869, p7
  3. ↑ "Towards 'The Shadow': Henry Kendall and the Mid-Century Crisis of Faith" by Michael Ackland, Westerly, September vol. 35 no. 3, 1990, p74
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