The Sick Stockrider (poem)

The Sick Stockrider is a poem by Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon. It was first published in Colonial Monthly magazine in January 1870,^[1] although the magazine was dated December 1869. It was later in the poet's second and last poetry collection Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870).

"The Sick Stockrider"
by Adam Lindsay Gordon
Written	1869
First published in	Colonial Monthly
Country	Australia
Language	English
Publication date	January 1870
Full text
The Sick Stockrider at Wikisource

Analysis

"The Evening Journal" (Adelaide) called the poem "...the best piece Mr. Gordon ever wrote..."^[2] after its publication in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes.

The Oxford History of Australian Literature stated that "The ballad of the dying stockman, with its creed of mateship, its laconic acceptance in true bush style of whatever life and death may offer, led Marcus Clarke to assert that in Gordon's work lay the beginnings of a national school of Australian poetry."^[3]

In his commentary on the poem in 60 Classic Australian Poems editor Geoff Page noted that "there is no sense yet of the washed-out, hyper-heated, intensely Australian landscape created by the impressionist painters Streeton and Roberts in the 1890s". He also states that it's as if the poem "created the template which later and perhaps more sophisticated balladists like 'Banjo' Paterson and Henry Lawson could utilise."^[4]

Further publications

• An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by Bertram Stevens (1907)
• The Sick Stockrider and Other Poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon (1945)^[5]
• Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann (1984)^[6]
• My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne (1985)^[7]
• 60 Classic Australian Poems edited by Geoff Page, University of NSW Press (2009)^[8]
• Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, University of NSW Press (2011)^[9]

See also

• 1870 in poetry
• 1870 in literature
• 1870 in Australian literature

References

1. Austlit - "The Sick Stockrider" by Adam Lindsay Gordon
2. "The Evening Journal", 3 October 1870, p3
3. The Oxford History of Australian Literature, Second Edition, p696
4. 60 Classic Australian Poems edited by Geoff Page, University of NSW Press, 2009, p24
5. "The Sick Stockrider and Other Poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 29 November 2024.
6. "Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 29 November 2024.
7. "My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 29 November 2024.
8. "60 Classic Australian Poems edited by Geoff Page". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 29 November 2024.
9. "Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 23 September 2024.