Analysis of The Wicket Cricket Critic

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



If the cricket critics' nagging
Merits stern official gagging
Which I doubt
How would critical ascetics,
With their prosy homiletics,
 Shut it out?
And the question then arises:
If more cricketing surprises,
Such as bodyline, begin to threaten cricket,
And another stunt, when sprung,
Call for clicking of the tongue,
 Should a cricket critic critically click it?

When the barrackers grow lyric
In a manner most satiric
And profane,
How, one ventures still to wonder,
May the clamor be kept under?
How restrain?
For one barbaric larrik-
In can do a lot of barrack-
In', and cause a lot of worry at the wicket.
But would sportsmen be abusing
Cricket canons in refusing
To supply that cricket critic with a ticket?

As a critic analytic
Of the cricket critics' critic
I would say,
When we criticise their cricket,
Then the players have to stick it,
Come what may.
No specific soporific
May be used; for it is diffic-
Ult to strike a critic partly paralytic.
So there's nothing gained in seeking,
As I know; and I am speaking
 As a critic of the cricket critic's critic.


Scheme AABCCBCCDEEF GGHIIHAXDAAD GGCDFXAAGAAG
Poetic Form
Metre 10101010 1010101 111 111001 1111 111 00101010 111010 1110111010 0010111 1110101 101010100011 101110 00101010 001 11101110 10101110 101 110101 01101110 001011101010 11101010 10100010 101110101010 1010010 10101010 111 111110 10101111 111 10101 1111111 11101010010 11101010 11101110 101010101010
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,041
Words 188
Sentences 10
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 12, 12, 12
Lines Amount 36
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 281
Words per stanza (avg) 62
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

57 sec read
86

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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