Ernest George Moll (1900 - 1993)
a biographical sketch

by Dirk H.R. Spennemann

Ernest Moll was born in Murtoa, Victoria, on 25 August 1900 and moved to Strathdown, Gerogery, New South Wales in 1909. From 1913-18 he attended Concordia College, Adelaide and at the age of 20 moved to the United States for study, graduating Bachelor of Arts, Lawrence College in 1922 and Master of Arts, Harvard University in 1923.

Having lectured at Colorado College from 1923 to 1925, Moll returned to Australia 1925 to 1926 where he collected and imported 3 000 Australian native birds to the United States. In 1927 he again took up his teaching position at Colorado College wher he also published his his first book of verse, Sedge fire. In the same year (on 24 September) he married Nieva Remington with whom he had two children, Richard and Carolyn. A year later Moll was appointed Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oregon, an institution where he remained until his retirement in 1966. From 1931 onwards Moll published fourteen poetry collections, one book of history and two books on poetry appreciation. His 1940 collection of poetry, Cut from mulga, was chosen by the Commonwealth Literary Committee as best book of the year. In 1966 Moll etired from the University of Oregon, and was awarded the University Medal for Distinguished Academic Service. Having moved to Oroville, California in 1972, Moll continued writing until his death there on 15 May 1997.

Moll maintained his connections with Australia, lecturing on exchange at Sydney Teachers' College 1939 to 1940, and returning frequently to the border region, particularly Yackandah.

Publications

1927Sedge Fire .Portland, Oregon : Metropolitan Press.
 [collection of verse]
1931Native moments and other poems .Portland, Oregon : Metropolitan Press.
 [collection of verse] 68 p. ; 20 cm.
1934Campus Sonnets .Portland, Oregon : Metropolitan Press.
 [collection of verse] 61 p. ; 22 cm.
Contains: To an Entering College Freshman -- Pronouns and Spring -- Examination in Romantic Poets -- Dragon-Killer -- Faculty Clown -- Intellectual Ferret, Muzzled -- Professional Scholar -- The Idealist -- Linesman in Poetry Class -- For a Campus Poetess -- Faculty at the Came -- Success-Boy -- Professorial Hen-Coop -- Heroic Dullard -- Faistaff in Class -- Examination for a Teacher -- An Instructor -- Question -- Mind-Limits -- On Reading a War Poet With a Class -- On Asking a Class to Read jeffers -- Robinson Jeffers. I. Poet in Stone -- Robinson Jeffers I. Builder of Tor House -- To the Faculty -- Task-Master -- On the Way to Class -- Half-Feeders -- Students and Teacher -- On Paying Tribute to Pain -- On Pain and joy -- On Virtue -- On Man -- On Woman -- Love -- Love and Convention -- Beauty. I. The Conditions of Beauty -- Beauty II. Illustration -- Beauty III. Conclusion -- Immortality -- Double Portrait -- By the Fireside -- One Reason -- Inscription for a Modern University.
1935Blue interval: poems of Crater Lake .Portland, Oregon : Metropolitan Press.
 [collection of verse] 41 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.--; with illustrations by Karl J. Belser.
Contains: Crater Lake (From the Rim) -- Night on the Lake -- Moorise -- Wizard Island -- Wizard ISland (at Night) -- Applegate's Paintbrush -- Under Cloudtrap -- Dutton Cliff at Sunset -- Tragedy -- Submlimity -- Color -- Hemlocks -- Windblown Pine -- Reflections (Watchman & Hillman) -- LLAO -- Rock Patterns (The Grottos) -- Tree Patterns on Erosion Slopes -- Man and Beuty -- Rock Lichens -- Time I. The Past -- Time. II. The Future -- Time III. The Present -- Farewell.
1940Cut from Mulga Poems.Capetown, Melbourne : Melbourne University Press in association with Oxford University Press.
 [collection of verse] 79 p. ; 23 cm
Contains: For Critics -- Eagles over the Lambing Paddock -- The Bush Speaks -- The Leave-taking -- Winter Ploughing -- Returned Soldier -- A Gnarled Riverina Gum-tree -- Kookaburras -- At Cross-streets, Sydney -- On Reading a Newspaper in the Bush -- The Slug -- The Swaggie -- Cootamundra Wattles -- Red Charlie -- The Old Racehorse -- After the Fire -- The Hide-buyer -- On Watching a Woodchopper -- Desert Country in Summer -- Bottle Swallows -- Progress -- The Crow -- Australian Idyll -- Foxes Among the Lambs -- Farm-hand -- To a Dying Wild Cockatoo -- On Reading a War Poet with a Class -- On Man -- Snares for Beauty -- One Reason -- In Sandstone Country after Rain -- The Chase -- Breaking the Colt -- Tle Sensualist Replies -- The Snake -- A Woman's Invitation -- On Cutting a Christmas-tree -- Thrift -- Fence-maker -- At the Grave of a Land-shark -- "Guns on Western Front Play Hide-and-Seek" -- In the Garden -- Mad jack -- Aside -- Pastoral -- Death of an Old Sheep-dog -- Natural Economy-in the Garden -- Ale Man of Parts -- Clearing for the Plough -- Sentimentalist -- During Drouth -- To Herrick, on a Windy Day -- Millie -- A Song for Dark Days, 1939 -- "Not Charioted by Bacchus and his Pards" -- Duck-hunters -- Under Gum-trees at Sunset -- Country Parson -- Midsummer-night's Mood -- Wind in Summer -- Gums -- A Dead Magpie -- To H. S. in Farewell.
1944' Figure in Clay (A Village Blacksmith)' Southerly vol.5 no.3, p.19-21.
 [verse]
1945' In Praise of Cactoblastus' Southerly vol.6 no.1, p.19.
 [verse]
1945Brief waters.Sydney : The Australasian Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd
 [collection of verse] 83 p. ; 22 cm.
Contains: Hold Dear Things Not too Close -- A Rabbit-skinner -- The Wonder Bird -- Song -- Early-morning Train to Sydney -- Two Friends -- Sanctuary -- Land-buyer -- Farm Scene -- "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" -- Between Winter and Spring -- Godiva's Coventry -- Tle Bargain -- To a Child at Night in Australia -- Sunrise in the Riverina -- The Hawthom-tree -- Quatrains for a Girl -- The Butcher-bird -- Street Corner -- Bantam Rooster -- On a Piece of Rock from Central Australia 82 -- The Cleaner -- Brief Waters -- Anthropologist -- At a Civilian Defence Lecture on Bombs -- A Muscovy Duck -- In Auckland Harbour -- An Old Lady -- Cleaning up the Wood-heap (Between Wars) -- The Cycle -- Ewe with Twin Lambs -- Gunnamatta Bay, Cronulla -- A Suicide -- A Pause -- Black Woman -- Instructions to a Boy on Digging Rabbits -- A Great and Tragic Australian Poet -- Happiness -- Fishing in the Australian Alps -- Brinsley Town -- Seven O'Clock Tram -- The Nameless One -- Mary Shelley to Trelawny on his Proposal of Marriage, 1831 -- Parrot-shooting -- The Poet -- Campfires -- Thrush in Winter -- Big Fred -- After Hearing a Lecture on the Poetic Mind -- A Mother -- At the Post-office -- Bees by Proxy -- Pruning Roses -- Opening the Cage -- Slaughter-house Idyll -- Mouse-plague -- On an Amoeba -- The Twisted Tree
.
1946' Barren Country' Southerly vol.7 no.4, p.227.
 [verse]
1946' Beware the Cuckoo' Southerly vol.7 no.1, p.13
 [verse]
1946' Sheep Killer' Southerly vol.7 no.4, p.209-210.
 [verse]
1946' Under the Gum Trees at Sunset' An Australasian Anthology : Australian and New Zealand Poems, edited by Percival Serle, Frank Wilmot and R.H.Croll Sydney, NSW : Collins, p.289.
 [verse]
1947' An Undertaker's Advertisement' Southerly vol.8 no.1, p.38.
 [verse]
1947Beware the Cuckoo and other Poems .Sydney : The Australasian Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd.
 [collection of verse] 89 p. ; 22 cm.
Contains: Beware the Cuckoo -- Draught-horse and Tractor -- By the Fireside -- Figure in Clay -- In Praise, of Cactoblastis -- The Praying Mantis -- On Growing Old -- The Turkeys -- Clearing out the Rabbits -- "Invitation" to the God of War -- Atlantis -- The Pet Rosella -- Romanticist's Problem -- An Undertaker's Advertisement -- Postscript to Paradise Lost -- The Drayman -- Elegy for a Farmer -- The Dark Guest -- After Listening to a War-enthusiast -- At the Pool -- Sheep-killer -- The Bower-bird -- Robbing the Tree-hive -- Barren Country -- To the Modern University -- Bush Psychologist -- On Wordsworth's "Daffodils" -- In the Garden -- A Visionary -- An Old Light-horseman Comments on the War, 1940 -- Freeman -- Stream and Rock -- On a Lady's Man, Recently Dead -- After Reading a Book on Abnormal Psychology -- Jane Williams (After her Marriage to Hogg) -- To a Prominent Optimist -- Dew-plants -- Wife to a Second Husband -- The Well and the Star -- On Closing a Learned Book -- In a Farm Bedroom -- For ____ -- For L____ with a Twig of Berries -- Bird's Nest in Winter -- The Shout and the Whisper -- Tle Lesson -- Spider-web Across the Path from Town -- Budgerigars -- On a Man of Wit -- Thistles in Winter -- Advice to an Over-intellectual Young Man -- Explanation -- A Spray of Daphne -- Slaughter of the Ants -- To the Muse, in Lean Days -- Commemorative Verses -- Growth of a Poet
.
1948The Waterhole A Poem.Sydney : Angus & Robertson.
 [collection of verse] 98 p. ; 23 cm.
Contains: The Quiet -- The Waterhole -- The Blacks -- Annunciation -- Transition -- The Homestead -- The Farm -- The City -- Epilogue.
1950' Eagles Over the Lambing Paddock' A Book of Australian and New Zealand Verse, edited by Walter Murdoch and Alan Mulgan Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.215.
 [verse]
1950' Farm Day' Southerly vol.11 no.2, p.83
 [verse]
1950' Foxes Among the Lambs' A Book of Australian and New Zealand Verse, edited by Walter Murdoch and Alan Mulgan Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.214-215.
 [verse]
1953The lifted spear.Sydney : Angus & Robertson.
 [collection of verse] [8], 63 p. ; 22 cm.

Contains: The Lifted Spear -- Girl Surfing in War-time -- Verses for a Birthday -- Still Interval -- Preparation for a Dark Voyage -- Spider -- Invitation to Taste Wild Honeycomb -- Turn About -- A Coast Idyll -- Escape from Death in the Desert -- The Woodcutter -- The Young Lubra -- Farm Day -- Angle-shot of Farmer Brown -- Invitation to Help Make a Better World -- Sun-healing -- How and Mat the Corals Built -- On Having Grown Old -- A Scientist Writes from Bikini -- Marguerite -- Jonah at Nineveh (Part One: The Journey South --Part Two: japho --Part Three: Outbound for Tarshish --Part Four: Tle End of Flight --Part Five: To Nineveh --Part Six: Nineveh --Part Seven: Vigil --Part Eight: Tle Gourd --Part Nine: The Fortieth Day ).

1955' Riverina Morning' The Bulletin vol.76 no.3958, 21 December, p.2.
 [verse]
1956' A Stone Bridge Built by Convicts' The Bulletin vol.77 no.4009, 12 December, p.12.
 [verse]
1956' Beware the Cuckoo' A Book of Australian Verse, edited by Judith Wright (Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.83)
 [verse]
1956' Cicadas in February' The Bulletin vol.77 no.3970, 14 March, p.23.
 [verse]
1956' Kookaburras at Evening' The Bulletin vol.77 no.3985, 27 June, p.23.
 [verse]
1956' On Having Grown Old' A Book of Australian Verse, edited by Judith Wright (Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.84)
 [verse]
1956' One Way to Fame' The Sydney Morning Herald 11 August, p.11.
 [verse]
1956' Summer Evening' The Bulletin vol.77 no.4008, 5 December, p.13.
 [verse]
1956' Two from Yackandandah : Cemetery' The Bulletin vol.77 no.3963, 25 January, p.35.
 [verse]
1956' Two from Yackandandah : Storm' The Bulletin vol.77 no.3963, 25 January, p.35.
 [verse]
1957Below these hills: the story of a Riverina farm .Melbourne : Melbourne University Press.
 [prose] 123 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.--written in collaboration with his brother Otto Moll, with line drawings by Alison Forbes.
1957Poems: 1940-55 .Sydney : Angus & Robertson:
 [collection of verse] xiv, 238 p. ; 22 cm. A compilation of poems previously published in the volumes' Cut from Mulga,''Brief waters,''Beware the cuckoo,''The waterhole,' and'The lifted spear.'
Contains: For Critics -- Eagles over the Lambing Paddock -- The Bush Speaks -- The Leave-taking -- Winter Ploughing -- Returned Soldier -- A Gnarled Riverina Gum-tree -- Kookaburras -- At Cross-streets, Sydney -- On Reading a Newspaper in the Bush -- The Slug -- The Swaggie -- Cootamundra Wattles -- Red Charlie -- The Old Racehorse -- After the Fire -- The Hide-buyer -- On Watching a Woodchopper -- Desert Country in Summer -- Bottle Swallows -- Progress -- The Crow -- Australian Idyll -- Foxes Among the Lambs -- Farm-hand -- To a Dying Wild Cockatoo -- On Reading a War Poet with a Class -- On Man -- Snares for Beauty -- One Reason -- In Sandstone Country after Rain -- The Chase -- Breaking the Colt -- Tle Sensualist Replies -- The Snake -- A Woman's Invitation -- On Cutting a Christmas-tree -- Thrift -- Fence-maker -- At the Grave of a Land-shark -- "Guns on Western Front Play Hide-and-Seek" -- In the Garden -- Mad jack -- Aside -- Pastoral -- Death of an Old Sheep-dog -- Natural Economy-in the Garden -- Ale Man of Parts -- Clearing for the Plough -- Sentimentalist -- During Drouth -- To Herrick, on a Windy Day -- Millie -- A Song for Dark Days, 1939 -- "Not Charioted by Bacchus and his Pards" -- Duck-hunters -- Under Gum-trees at Sunset -- Country Parson -- Midsummer-night's Mood -- Wind in Summer -- Gums -- A Dead Magpie -- To H. S. in Farewell -- Hold Dear Things Not too Close -- A Rabbit-skinner -- The Wonder Bird -- Song -- Early-morning Train to Sydney -- Two Friends -- Sanctuary -- Land-buyer -- Farm Scene -- "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" -- Between Winter and Spring -- Godiva's Coventry -- Tle Bargain -- To a Child at Night in Australia -- Sunrise in the Riverina -- The Hawthom-tree -- Quatrains for a Girl -- The Butcher-bird -- Street Corner -- Bantam Rooster -- On a Piece of Rock from Central Australia 82 -- The Cleaner -- Brief Waters -- Anthropologist -- At a Civilian Defence Lecture on Bombs -- A Muscovy Duck -- In Auckland Harbour -- An Old Lady -- Cleaning up the Wood-heap (Between Wars) -- The Cycle -- Ewe with Twin Lambs -- Gunnamatta Bay, Cronulla -- A Suicide -- A Pause -- Black Woman -- Instructions to a Boy on Digging Rabbits -- A Great and Tragic Australian Poet -- Happiness -- Fishing in the Australian Alps -- Brinsley Town -- Seven O'Clock Tram -- The Nameless One -- Mary Shelley to Trelawny on his Proposal of Marriage, 1831 -- Parrot-shooting -- The Poet -- Campfires -- Thrush in Winter -- Big Fred -- After Hearing a Lecture on the Poetic Mind -- A Mother -- At the Post-office -- Bees by Proxy -- Pruning Roses -- Opening the Cage -- Slaughter-house Idyll -- Mouse-plague -- On an Amoeba -- The Twisted Tree .-- Beware the Cuckoo -- Draught-horse and Tractor -- By the Fireside -- Figure in Clay -- In Praise, of Cactoblastis -- The Praying Mantis -- On Growing Old -- The Turkeys -- Clearing out the Rabbits -- "Invitation" to the God of War -- Atlantis -- The Pet Rosella -- Romanticist's Problem -- An Undertaker's Advertisement -- Postscript to Paradise Lost -- The Drayman -- Elegy for a Farmer -- The Dark Guest -- After Listening to a War-enthusiast -- At the Pool -- Sheep-killer -- The Bower-bird -- Robbing the Tree-hive -- Barren Country -- To the Modern University -- Bush Psychologist -- On Wordsworth's "Daffodils" -- In the Garden -- A Visionary -- An Old Light-horseman Comments on the War, 1940 -- Freeman -- Stream and Rock -- On a Lady's Man, Recently Dead -- After Reading a Book on Abnormal Psychology -- Jane Williams (After her Marriage to Hogg) -- To a Prominent Optimist -- Dew-plants -- Wife to a Second Husband -- The Well and the Star -- On Closing a Learned Book -- In a Farm Bedroom -- For ____ -- For L____ with a Twig of Berries -- Bird's Nest in Winter -- The Shout and the Whisper -- Tle Lesson -- Spider-web Across the Path from Town -- Budgerigars -- On a Man of Wit -- Thistles in Winter -- Advice to an Over-intellectual Young Man -- Explanation -- A Spray of Daphne -- Slaughter of the Ants -- To the Muse, in Lean Days -- Commemorative Verses -- Growth of a Poet .-- The Quiet -- The Waterhole -- The Blacks -- Annunciation -- Transition -- The Homestead -- The Farm -- The City -- Epilogue -- The Lifted Spear -- Girl Surfing in War-time -- Verses for a Birthday -- Still Interval -- Preparation for a Dark Voyage -- Spider -- Invitation to Taste Wild Honeycomb -- Turn About -- A Coast Idyll -- Escape from Death in the Desert -- The Woodcutter -- The Young Lubra -- Farm Day -- Angle-shot of Farmer Brown -- Invitation to Help Make a Better World -- Sun-healing -- How and Mat the Corals Built -- On Having Grown Old -- A Scientist Writes from Bikini -- Marguerite -- Jonah at Nineveh (Part One: The Journey South --Part Two: japho --Part Three: Outbound for Tarshish --Part Four: Tle End of Flight --Part Five: To Nineveh --Part Six: Nineveh --Part Seven: Vigil --Part Eight: Tle Gourd --Part Nine: The Fortieth Day ).
1958Blue interval: poems of Crater Lake.Portland, Oregon : Metropolitan Press.
 [collection of verse]..
1962The Rainbow Serpent and Other Poems .Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 [collection of verse] 63 p. col. illus. 23 cm.
Contains: The Rainbow Serpent -- In a Yackandandah Garden -- Cicadas in February -- One Way to Fame -- The End of Eloquence -- Cemetery at Yackandandah -- Lizard -- Magpies in the Rain -- Kookaburras at Evening -- Morning -- Summer Evening -- Two ships to Mitylene -- Dear Coleridge -- Elegy for a Teacher -- In Memoriam E.C.A. Leach -- The Lightless Ferry.
1965Briseis . (A Poem)New York, N.Y.: Pageant Press.
 [poem] 55 p. ; 21 cm.
1968' Beware the Cuckoo' A Book of Australian Verse, edited by Judith Wright (Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.81)
 [verse]
1968' On Having Grown Old' A Book of Australian Verse, edited by Judith Wright (Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.82).
 [verse]
1971The Road to Cactus-land (a group of poems).Sydney : Edwards & Shaw.
 [collection of verse]51 p. 23 cm.
1979Farm Day' The Jindyworobaks, selected and edited by Brian Elliott (St Lucia, Qld : University of Queensland Press, p.193).
 [verse]
1983The Well and the Star .XXXXX: Privately Printed
 [collection of verse]
Contains: Twigs for a Winter Graland for Old Men -- A Reading of Earth -- Old Men Sowing Seeds in Late Autumn -- A Senior Citizen Muses -- Intimation of Senility -- Winter Sunset -- In the Garden -- Sixty Years after First Reading Tennyson's'Ulysses' -- Departure of a Guest -- Of Grass and Men -- A Fancy in Drought-time -- On my Seventy-Sixth Birthday, 1976 -- Verses for a Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary -- A Wreath -- With Heavy Heart, cold hand -- Dirge in Early Spring -- Matin of the Awakened Spirit -- Her Faith -- White Violets -- Bedside Moment -- Mysterious though the alembic of our being -- Death keeps his bond of silence with the dead -- Death, you that quenched the light -- Vesper and Epiphany -- Spirit in spirit, but never hand in hand -- The colors of her life -- A Vision of Grief.
1986' Beware the Cuckoo' The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, edited by Les A Murray (Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.137)
 [verse]
1986' Clearing for the Plough' The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, edited by Les A Murray (Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.136)
 [verse]
1986' The Bush Speaks' The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, edited by Les A Murray (Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.135-136)
 [verse]
1992The view from a Ninetieth Birthday. Lyrical Poems of Old Age .La Jolla, Calif.La Jolla Poets Press.
 [collection of verse] 71 p. ; 22 cm.
Contains: One for the Road -- In Praise of Mirages -- On my Seventy-Sixth Birthday -- Verses for for a Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary -- Bedside Moment -- Dirge in Early Spring -- White Violets -- Reverie -- Youth and Age -- Cloud-Shadows -- Count-down -- Preparation for a Quilting Bee -- Dawn Watch -- Reunion -- View from a Ninetieth Birthday.
1993Recognitions at ninety-three .Oroville : Comer's Print Shop.
 [collection of verse]
1994The children of Somalia 1992-1994 and other poems .Oroville : Comer's Print Shop.
 [collection of verse]
1995A gleaner's sheaf of poems .Oroville : Comer's Print Shop.
 [collection of verse]
1996' Beware the Cuckoo' The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse , edited by Les A. Murray (South Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.137).
 [verse]
1996' Clearing for the Plough' The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse edited by Les A. Murray (South Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.136).
 [verse]
1996' The Bush Speaks' The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, edited by Les A. Murray (South Melbourne, Vic : Oxford University Press, p.135-136).
 [verse]
Sources Gardiner, Thomas T. (19650 The Poetry of E.G. Moll Southerly vol.25 no.3, p.173-181.
Green, Henry Mackenzie (1950) Remaining Poets : The Situation Today in: Fourteen Minutes : Short Sketches of Australian Poets and Their Work, from Harpur to the Present Day, by Henry Mackenzie Green Sydney, NSW : Angus & Robertson, p.182-191.
Picot, James (1941) Australian Poetry in 1940 - And After? Nature of Trends - Does the Critic See? Meanjin Papers vol.1 no.2, p.1-5.


[Literature and Arts]


Bibliographic citation for this document

Spennemann, Dirk H.R. (2000). Ernest George Moll (1900-1993)): a biographical sketch. URL: http:/marshall.csu.edu.au/Marshalls/html/literature/Moll.html

CONTACT:
Dirk H.R. Spennemann, Institute of Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, P.O.Box 789, Albury NSW 2640, Australia.
e-mail: dspennemann@csu.edu.au


© Dirk H.R. Spennemann & Jane Downing 2000
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