Analysis of Obadiah Bell

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



I am fit and I am well (so said Obadiah Bell.)
I take life as it come from day to day,
I have never been a scorner
Of the 'trouble round the corner,'
For it may be lurking half a life away.
No false vision ere bewitches
Me with dreams of fame or riches,So I'm fairly well content and free of strife.
With my job and friends and my garden and my fowls, and my club and my bowls
and my pipe and my books and my dog and my family and my wife.
And, since I seek the safer things in life,
Most especially my family and wife.

On occasion, vagrant fears stir me with the passing years,
A sudden qualm, a flash of half-felt fright;
But I know my limitations
As a savior of nations:
  And who am I to put the world aright.
So, when qualms like these assail me,
What I find may never fail me
As, contented as I may, tho' life I jog,
Are my job and friends and my fowls and my club and my bowls and my pipe
and my family and my wife and my books and my garden and my dog,
And, when I'd dissipate some mental fog,
Most especially my garden and my dog.

For a man can tell tell (so said Obadiah Bell.)
When what he has may one day disappear:
So I thank what gods there be
That all they gave to me
Has stayed with me for yet another year.
And I do such as I can
To assist my fellow man
And wish him blessed as I am with my lot
With my family and my wife, and my job and my bowls and my pipe and my
dog and my club and my friends and my little garden plot;
And, when I think of all the joy I've got,
Most especially my friends, and which is not?


Scheme ABCCBDEDEEE DXDDBFFGXHGH ACFFCIIJXJJJ
Poetic Form
Metre 1110111110101 1111111111 1110101 10101010 11111010101 111011 11111111101100111 111010110011011011 01101101101100011 0111010101 1010110001 10101011110101 0101011111 1111010 1010110 011111011 11111011 11111011 10101111111 11101011011011011 011000110110110011 011101101 1010110011 101111110101 111111101 1111111 111111 1111110101 0111111 1011101 0111111111 1110001101101101101 10110110110101 0111110111 1010110111
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,505
Words 329
Sentences 11
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 11, 12, 12
Lines Amount 35
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 386
Words per stanza (avg) 108
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:39 min read
113

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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