Birth : a little journal of Australian poetry

Call Number
N 821.05 A BIR
Created/Published
Melbourne : Melbourne Literary Club, 1916-
Issue
Vol. 2 No. 1 (December 1917)
Images
4
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Text

BIRTH.  

price, Threepence.  

Voe. 2.  

December, 1917.  

No. 1.  

GALLIPOLI.  

Oh, grey shores in the moonlight,  

How solitary now  

Silence broods in the loneliness  

Where they sleep.  

In the black ravines, and the darkness —  

Cities of Death—  

The fierce and tumultuous voices  

Are hushed and still.  

Oh, grey seas breaking, lonely,  

Where great ships lay  

Oh, hearts beloved and loving,  

That beat no more.  

The dawn comes and the sunset,  

But never they  

From the hills of thunder, that fold them  

With battles gone.  

Oh, grey shores in the moonlight,  

How solitary now  

Silence broods in the loneliness  

Where they sleep.  

HENRY TATE.  

OUR REVIEWER.  

Zora Cross — “Songs of Love and Life.”*  

Zora Cross, in addition to charming samples of lyric  

work, appeared in the “ Bulletin,” and “ Worker,” is now  

represented by sixty “ Love Sonnets,” and six “ Sonnets  

of the South.” Her recently published book and new  

enlarged edition containing these sonnets and num-  

ber of lyrics, have received quite large number of  

strongly commendatory reviews.  

To those who have admired the fine quality of her  

lyrics, the sonnet series come as disappointment.  

Apart from the technical quality, which, for one who  

aspires to excellence in the strict court of the sonnet, is  

altogether too uneven and careless in too many places.  

Miss Cross has struck no new woman’s note, and has  

added nothing to the man’s note save contempt for  

those things that have made the man’s note —restraint  

and dignity.  

All that she has said in her sonnets has been said  

before, and very much better said. Take the famous  

“Hymn to Aphrodite” and the “Anactoria” of Sappho,  

take Shelley’s “ Epipsychidion, ’ take Swinburne’s “In  

the Orchard ” (this last far more daring poem than any  

of hers) where we have the same subject, the same strong  

play of human emotions —but what superb artistry, what  

restraint and dignity of treatment!  

These poets have touched passion with their pens of  

gold only to exalt it, till it soars high above impurity as  

lark-song above the earth. Zora Cross gallops blind  

Pegasus into the temple of Love, and lo it becomes  

maison des liaisons. Her treatment of passion is coarse,  

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http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2053753724

APA citation

Australian Institute of the Arts & Literature & Literary Club (Melbourne, Vic.). (1916). Birth : a little journal of Australian poetry Retrieved August 19, 2025, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2053753724

MLA citation

Australian Institute of the Arts & Literature and Literary Club (Melbourne, Vic.). Birth : a little journal of Australian poetry Melbourne: Melbourne Literary Club, 1916. Web. 19 August 2025 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2053753724>

Harvard/Australian citation

Australian Institute of the Arts & Literature & Literary Club (Melbourne, Vic.). 1916, Birth : a little journal of Australian poetry Melbourne Literary Club, Melbourne viewed 19 August 2025 http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2053753724

Wikipedia citation

{{Citation
  | author1=Australian Institute of the Arts & Literature.
  | author2=Literary Club (Melbourne, Vic.).
  | title=Birth : a little journal of Australian poetry.
  | year=1916
  | section=v. ; 26 cm.
  | issue=Vol. 2 No. 1 (December 1917)
  | location=Melbourne
  | publisher=Melbourne Literary Club
  | url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2053753724
  | id=nla.obj-2053753724
  | access-date=19 August 2025
  | via=Trove
}}

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