A Summer Christmas
And a Sonnet Upon the S. S. Ballaarat (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Summer Christmas: And a Sonnet Upon the S. S. Ballaarat<br><br>"A Summer Christmas" itself, like Hudibras or Dr Syntax, does not pretend to be poetry. It is a novel in rhyme, - a thread to string together a number of detached poems, the composition of which has extended over about ten years. The story has been told in rhyme, because Hudibrastic verse is so good a vehicle for conveying succinct pictures of life - in this instance life upon an Australian station (i.e., sheep-station). The idea of writing a novel in verse upon ordinary social life was suggested to me by Mr Coventry Patmore's delicious "Angel in the House." Several tales have been inserted after the manner of Longfellow's "Tales of the Wayside Inn." Some of them have already been published in magazines, and three of them appeared separately in my first volume, "Frithjof and Ingebjorg." "A Summer Christmas" is a sequel to my poem, "The Squire's Brother," two personages, Mr and Mrs Forte, appearing in both.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.