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'I know of little Australian poetry that has for its subject the undeniable picturesqueness of that free unconventional life which is now so nearly extinct... The boundary rider has taken the place of the stockman... And we search mostly in vain for the story of this old life told in verse - for the expression of the poetic side of that life... The rich field of Australian scenic description, so far as I know, is all but virgin soil, save where Kendall here and there has turned a furrow which all must sorrow was not longer and broader. But Kendall, with all his sensitiveness to beauty with all his sweet gracefulness of expression does not strike his ploughshare into the common life of young Australia. Gordon, indeed, stirs us with a genuine crack of the stockwhip, and makes our veins tingle to the long strong gallop of the stockhorse. But who has given us a glimpse of the poetic side of the strange lone life of the solitary shepherd?... Where are the verse-tales of bush life and bush death?...'
Soldiers die in battle and sailors at sea, but a miner at the height of his vigour digs his own grave, 'when the earth gives way above him,/ And falls in with deafening roar.' His mourners gather, where he is sleeping 'Neath Australia's dust-fleck'd sod.'
