Borrowd Plumes , Adam Lindsay Gordon was one of the premier Australian poets of the 19th Century although he was little recognized in his own lifetime. His father was traveled through India and Australasia before settling back down in Cheltenham, England, where Gordon went to school. Whilst he was an accomplished sportsman he was not the most dedicated student, even when he moved to a military academy in Woolwich.
Borrowd Plumes by Adam Lindsay Gordon
Borrow’d Plumes
[A Preface and a Piracy]
Prologue
Of borrow’d plumes I take the sin,
My extracts will apply
To some few silly songs which in
These pages scatter’d lie.
The words are Edgar Allan Poe’s,
As any man may see,
But what a POE-t wrote in prose,
Shall make blank verse for me.
These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view
to their redemption from the many improvements to which
they have been subjected while going at random the rounds of the Press.
I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate
as I wrote it, if it circulate at all. In defence
of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think
nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable
to myself. E. A. P.
(See Preface to Poe’s Poetical Works.)
Epilogue
And now that my theft stands detected,
The first of my extracts may call
To some of the rhymes here collected
Your notice, the second to all.
Ah! friend, you may shake your head sadly,
Yet this much you’ll say for my verse,
I’ve written of old something badly,
But written anew something worse.
