The Magpie Lark



By lagoons and reedy places,
Where the little river races
By the lips of dreaming pools
Where the soothing water cools
Many a verdant slope and hollow,
Here my blithesome way I follow.
Anywhere that waters glisten
Pause a little while and listen.
You will hear my plaintive note
O'er the placid mirror float
Tho' nought know I of plaint or fret:
'Pierrot! Pierrette! Pierrot! Pierrette!'

Pierrot am I, light hearted fellow,
Be the day morose or mellow;
And pierrette, my dainty wife,
Adopts a like gay view of life;
We dance; we dance amid the sedges,
Dance by duplicated edges
Of the peaceful little ponds;
Now I bow, and she responds;
And then we dance together there,
Rise aloft, and dance on air;
Rising, falling, calling yet:
'Pierrot! Pierrette! Pierrot! Pierrette!'

Thistledown was ne'er so light
As our dainty, dancing flight;
Gay pied pipers, trim and neat;
Joy is in our wings, our feet;
Grace is in our every pose . . .
We dance, we dance till, at day's close,
When the pool's dark mirrors limn
Twilit glory at the brim
Trees and opalescent sky
We dance away; and as we fly
Our call comes faint and fainter yet:
'Pierrot!. Pierrette! .. Pierrot! ...'

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:02 min read
84

Quick analysis:

Scheme aabbccddeefE ccggaahhiifE jjkkxxdxllfe
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,138
Words 206
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 12, 12, 12

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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