| Rhymes From the Mines and Other Lines | |
| Author: | Edward Dyson |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Bush poetry |
| Publisher: | Angus and Robertson |
| Release Date: | 1896 |
| Media Type: | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages: | 178 |
Rhymes From the Mines and Other Lines (1896) was the first collection of poems by Australian poet Edward Dyson. It was released in hardback by Angus and Robertson in 1896, but not reprinted until 1973, and then with the title Rhymes From the Mines.[1] It features some of the poet's major early works, including "The Old Whim Horse", "The Rescue" and "The Worked-Out Mine".
The original collection includes 39 poems[2] by the author that are reprinted from various sources, though they mainly originally appeared in The Bulletin.[1]
A reviewer in The Town and Country Journal opined that "The Australian school of poetry, as we may fairly call it by now, is usually associated with a free and easy style of composition, in which the metre is so excessively free that it is not always easy to read into rhythm. Of this style the present book of verses is a good and typical example, and will not diminish the fame earned for its author by "A Golden Shanty." In the subject of mining he has struck a lode of almost wholly new poetical material, full of incident and adventure, and thrilling with hopes fulfilled or disappointed. The writer is evidently well acquainted with mining life, and gives expression to the comic as well as the pathetic aspects of its scenes and characters. The daring rescue of entombed miners; the desolation of the deserted works haunted by the ghostly-grey old whim-horse, the regrets of one pent in a city slum for the fierce freshness of the wilder life, are few of the subjects, not unworthy of poetic treatment, and handled in a manner whose very ruggedness is appropriate."[3]
In their review The Australasian ranked Dyson with some of the other well-known Australian poets of the time: "Mr. Edward Dyson is a welcome addition to the little band of writers who, within the last few years, have striven with no small success to found a distinctly Australian school of poetry. His "Rhymes from the Mines and Other Lines," published by Messrs. Angus and Robertson, of Sydney, are, like the verses of Messrs. A. B. Paterson, Henry Lawson, and Thomas Heney, thoroughly racy of the soil, and reproduce with great fidelity many of the rougher and more striking aspects of Australian society."[4]