Of Glory



WHO will persuade me that one perfect song   
 Is not more glorious than a victor’s bays?   
 I know not who. I ask because the phrase   
Runs lightly and the final words are strong.   
But did you press me for a right or wrong,           
 Then would I bid you hunt for perfect lays,   
 And rouse the dust of dead heroic days,   
And pass your judgement if you live so long.   
  
To me it seems more worth, when all is said,   
 To smoke a friend’s cigar and see the moon           
 Lie rippling on the Arno mid the strewn   
White ranks of rippling stars, to give my head   
 Its own good leading, to expect no boon,   
To sing, and damn the world, and join the dead.

 

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

37 sec read
24

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBAABBA CDDCDC
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 671
Words 125
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6

Arthur Maquarie

Arthur Maquarie was born in Dubbo, NSW, as Arthur Frank Macquarie Mullens, later changed his name by deed poll. After graduating from the University of Sydney in 1895 he worked in England as a freelance writer, in Italy as a teacher of English, and also lived in France and Spain; he was active in the Royal Society of Literature and organised the British committee which promoted intellectual harmony among the Allies in the First World War. He wrote several plays on medieval subjects and several volumes of lyrical verse, but is most significant for the assistance he provided to Henry Lawson in London in 1900-1; as well as writing articles about Lawson which helped introduce him to literary London, Maquarie arranged meetings with editors, publishers and literary agents, and lived with Lawson while part of the Joe Wilson sequence was being written. Lawson's poignant portrait of Maquarie's struggle as a hack writer in London forms part of recently discovered material and is included in Brian Kiernan's The Essential Henry Lawson (1982). more…

All Arthur Maquarie poems | Arthur Maquarie Books

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