Adam Lindsay Gordon

Onward onward! must we travel?
When will come the goal?
Riddle I may not unravel,
Cease to vex my soul.

Adam Lindsay Gordon (October 19, 1833 – 24 June 1870) was an Australian poet, jockey and politician.

Quotes

Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.

• Onward onward! must we travel?
     When will come the goal?
  Riddle I may not unravel,
     Cease to vex my soul.
  • Finis Exoptatus

• Question not, but live and labour
  Till yon goal be won,
  Helping every feeble neighbour,
   Seeking help from none;
  Life is mostly froth and bubble;
  Two things stand like stone,
  Kindness in another's trouble,
  Courage in your own.
  • Finis Exoptatus
  • Variant: Many quoters, including Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919), have "in our own" instead of "in your own".

• He never gave me a chance to speak,
    And he call’d her—worse than a dog—
  The girl stood up with a crimson cheek,
    And I fell’d him there like a log.
  I can feel the blow on my knuckles yet—
    He feels it more on his brow.
  In a thousand years we shall all forget
    The things that trouble us now.
  • "After the Quarrel", as anthologised in The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1912), p. 507, no. 373

• Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave,
    With never stone or rail to fence my bed;
  Should the sturdy station children pull the bush flowers on my grave,
    I may chance to hear them romping overhead.
  • "The Sick Stockrider", in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870)

External links

• Poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon (plain text)
• The Adam Lindsay Gordon Commemorative Committee
• Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870) Gravesite at Brighton General Cemetery (Vic).