Whales

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



The ways of the learned to me are 'Greek,'
And professors and such amaze me.
I know, without trying, the thing they seek,
Tho' I doubt if for that they'll praise me.

They want to discover why whales are big,
So they sail, at the risk of sinking,
In ships with elaborate, technical rig,
When the facts can be learned by thinking.

I can simply account for the size of a whale
And it doesn't seem much of a riddle
It's because he's so long from the nose to the tail
And in measurement round the middle.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
43

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 498
Words 100
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4

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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