Page:Facts and Fancies about Our "Son of the Woods", Henry Clarence Kendall and his Poetry (IA factsfanciesabou00hami).pdf/29

Rh "His life all through seems, from all that I have heard, to have been almost an unchequered plain of misfortune. Trouble followed trouble, each subsiding only to give place to another, like the waves of a rising tide. Whether his misfortunes were caused partly by his faults, or his faults caused by his misfortunes, or whether each was cause, in turn, acting and reacting on each other I will not attempt to say. If there was some little grain of dross mixed in with his fine gold, it is our part to forget that, seeing that we have not paid him half the debt we owe him.

Mr. Melville also informed me that Kendall had been dead for over two years, and nothing was done towards raising a monument to perpetuate his memory until Mr. Henniker Heaton (Sir Henniker Heaton) took steps to raise one at his own expense, over his grave, and to place his bust in the University. Apropos to this neglect, the Sydney "Bulletin" published some lines at that time:

"He sleeps beside the sea, The Lord of Song, For fame what now cares he, And what for wrong?

He sang the land's first strain Of tears and fire, And broke the world's old chain That bound its lyre.