By virtue of the publication of substantial volumes during their lifetime and public acclaim by their contemporaries, three writers were recognized in the colonial period of Australia's history (that is, virtually, the nineteenth century) as major poets. The earliest was Charles Harpur (1813-1868); the others were near-contemporaries--Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870) and Henry Kendall. After the deaths of Harpur and Gordon, Kendall was recognized in Australia not only during the remaining years of his life but well into the twentieth century as the preeminent nineteenth-century Australian poet. He was also the most prolific of the nineteenth-century poets. Harpur and Kendall have some affinities in their transcendental search for meaning through nature and to some extent in their handling of blank verse. Gordon's bush ballads, with their rollicking celebration of horsemanship, were more popular in England. Gordon is also the only Australian poet to have been included in the Oxford...