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Blessed is the mother with her children, thegirl with her boy.The husband sowing in the field, all thosewho increaseTo yet more life in that world's great totalof delight.In his introduction to Ned Kelly, Stewarthad written:We must find some story of legendarystature and of deep national significance orwe will lose that "elevation", that "excellenceof action" which Matthew Arnoldand Aristotle are united in thinking essentialto poetic drama.To Stewart, man is at his highest peak whenhe is acting as hero, so that it is not surprisingto see such superhuman figures as Rata,Mungo Park, Commander Worsley, CaptainQuiros or the scientific explorers Rutherfordand Professor Piccard striding towards theirideals throughout the book. "Sombrero" illustratesthis search for elevation and identity,this transformation of an aboriginal stockmaninto a rollicking archetypal bushman:Oh he was dark as the gibber stonesAnd took things just as easyAnd a white smile danced on his purple lipsLike an everlasting daisy.The horses strayed on the salt-bush plainAnd he went galloping after.The green shirt flew through the coolabahtreesLike budgerigars to water.And then what need had he to sighFor old men under the gibbersWhen he was as free as the winds that blowAlong the old dry rivers?He had the lubras' hot wild eyes,His green shirt and sombrero.He rode the plains on a piebald horseAnd he was his own hero.Besides illustrating Stewart's vivid use of imagery,this poem is a good example of his useof the ballad form, a favourite of his- especiallyafter the volume, Glencoe, written in 1946. Heis fond of the light refrain, and has managedto vary the tone considerably within the frameworkof the ballad form. In contrast to thebrightness of "Sombrero" is the stark, beautifulsimplicity of the elegy in Glencoe, which concludes:Oh, life is fierce and wildAnd the heart of the earth is stone,And the hand of a murdered childWill not bear thinking on.Sigh, wind in the pine,Cover it over with snow;But terrible things were doneLong, long ago.Stewart, however, does not limit himself tothe ballad. His versatility is shown in his handlingof sonnets, narratives, love-poems, gentlesatires, occasional sketches or nature lyrics.While this variety makes him diflScult to sumup, one is inclined to categorize him as anature poet, for his chief delight seems to bethe observant sketches of the small things inthe Australian and New Zealand bush—light,detailed portraits of wombats, mules, spidergums,the desert. They can be tender or whimsicalor as boisterously evocative as this one:"Sunshower"If he had sung a song for every whitefeatherThat wicked old magpie had sinned forevery blackBut clear he carolled on the gumtrees behindthe shackFor it was a mad season of black-and-whiteweatherWhen sunshowers swept the mountains indazzling wavesAnd shadow and shine seemed mixed in onetower of joy;And loud he sang, then like some larrikinboyMagpie and sunshower, splashing on the wetbright leaves.Tobogganed down the old green tree together.Stewart has a gift for the picturesque, forstartling imagery. His earliest published poemsshow a fondness for swooning whites ("0whiten poem for her sake/Whose whitenesslocks the note I seek") which changes to adark sensuous beauty:Leave it alone! For white hke the egg of asnakeIn its shell beside it another begins to breakAnd under those crimson tentacles, downthat throat.Secret and black still gurgles the oldestocean ....("The Fungus")He can range from the strangely eerie portraitof Shackleton's stranded ship in "Worslev Enchanted"—54 WESTERLY, No. 1, MARCH, 1968