Analysis of Asking Too Much

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis 1876 (Auburn) – 1938 (Melbourne)



You can't expect it! Goodness me!
T'would be a dreadful policy!
What sort of Ministerial dunce
Would try to do two things at once?

How can they deal with city needs,
While Bungalong or Rooville pleads,
For culverts, and Wow-wow grows sick
Through want of bridges o'er its 'crick?'

The logic of the thing's so plain:
To legislate on tram and train
Can't dig a single, blighted spud
Or help one milker chew her cud.

Then what's the use?  One might say more:
What are our legislators for?
Such vaunted measures as Defence
Won't build a single dog-leg fence.

Your splendid dreams of nationhood
Don't do the cocky any good.
Besides, there's something more than that,
They're apt to interfere with Fat!


Scheme AABB BBCC DDEE FFBB GGHH
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 11011101 111010100 11101001 11111111 11111101 11111 1101111 111101011 01010111 1101101 11010101 1111101 11011111 11101001 11010101 11010111 1101110 11010101 01110111 1110111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 685
Words 125
Sentences 12
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 108
Words per stanza (avg) 25
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
128

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis, better known as C. J. Dennis, was an Australian poet known for his humorous poems, especially "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke", published in the early 20th century. Though Dennis's work is less well known today, his 1915 publication of The Sentimental Bloke sold 65,000 copies in its first year, and by 1917 he was the most prosperous poet in Australian history. Together with Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson, both of whom he had collaborated with, he is often considered among Australia's three most famous poets. While attributed to Lawson by 1911, Dennis later claimed he himself was the 'laureate of the larrikin'. When he died at the age of 61, the Prime Minister of Australia Joseph Lyons suggested he was destined to be remembered as the 'Australian Robert Burns'. more…

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