Gordon, ADAM LINDSAY, the first of Australian poets, was born at Fayal in the Azores in 1833, the son of a retired army-captain. At twenty he sailed to Adelaide to push his fortune, and tried in turns, but without success, sheep-farming, 'over-landing,' and cattle-driving in South Australia, emerging to light in Melbourne as the best gentleman steeplechase-rider in the colony. His broken circumstances and religious hopelessness deepened the natural gloom of his temperament, and at length he threw up the struggle, and blew out his brains at Brighton, a marine suburb of Melbourne, 24th June 1870. He had published in 1867 Sea-spray and Smoke-drift, a very unequal volume, yet containing a few admirable lyrics reflecting closely the sombre colour of his life and the passionate despair that at last drove him to the refuge of death. His Ashtaroth, a Dramatic Lyric (1867), was an ambitious attempt at a task for which his powers were inadequate, only relieved from absolute failure by the beauty of the lyrics with which it is interspersed. His last volume, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, appeared, it is said, on the very day of his unhappy death, with a dedication to Major Whyte-Melville. The opening poem, 'The Sick Stock-rider,' is a marvelously vivid transcript from the bush-life he knew, steeped with the irresistible pathos of reality. 'How we beat the Favourite' is said to be the most popular poem in Australia, and certainly it is the best ballad of the turf in the English tongue, unequalled in its kind for fire and speed.
See A. P. Martin's article in Temple Bar for 1884 (vol. lxx.), Marcus Clarke's introduction to the complete edition of Gordon's poems, and D. B. W. Sladen's Australian Poets (1888).