He writes as bush folk themselves would if they were able, and it is this that has made his poetry popular with them and with city people to whom it is on that account just as interesting. It is not likely to be less so. Time, with the changes of a mechanical age, has already given a legendary attraction to some of the old bush ways. When the future looks back to the past as we look back to the middle ages, Paterson's poetry will probably have the aura of old minstrelsy. He best of all has sung the action of bush life in that natural music of rhythm and rhyme which has a perpetual general appeal.
ix
