Leg Theory

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



Oh, what a pleasant game is life
When we are bravely batting
And glorying in skill and strife.
We scorn defensive patting
As Fate sends down the easy ones
We set the ball a-soaring
Straight to the fence and pile up runs
And go on scoring, scoring.

A week it lasts, a month, a year
Ten years if luck holds steady
No crafty trick may wake our fear,
For every move we're ready
No matter how the ball is bumped.
We are so sure, so clever
We can't be caught or bowled or stumped
We're set!  We're in forever!

But comes a time, as I have found,
When in our carefree playing,
Life's game in this vast cricket ground
Grows suddenly dismaying.
Just as we think we're set to peg
Away, thro' centuries rolling,
Fate shifts his fieldsmen to the leg
And starts in body bowling!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

46 sec read
51

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCBCB DEDEFGFG HBHBIBIB
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 750
Words 148
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8

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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