March Flies
Now comes the time when we douse flies
With various kinds of sprays
The sand flies, and the house flies,
And the flies with furtive ways.
But I keep my hate for the large flies
That come for the tree-lined creek
Those arch flies, the March flies
With a crosscut saw for a beak.
Now, most flies rouse in the autumn
From the summer's drowsy daze,
And they bite as nature taught 'em,
In various styles and ways.
They nip, or they stab or they burrow;
But the fly that knocks me out
Is the March fly, with the dull, dead eye
And a crosscut saw for a snout.
Now the house flies come to the table
Or busily play on the pane;
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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The Bulldog Breed
'It's dogged as does it.' They've made it a saying,
A motto to hold in that tight little isle
To hold in their fighting and toiling and playing
And stick to the job with a tight little smile.
As fortune seems bleakest they cut out complaining
They cut out the cackle and dig in their toes
As, inch upon inch, the lost ground they're regaining,
And just how they manage it nobody knows.
'It's dogged as does it.' There's something heroic,
Unseen and unsung in this desperate drive;
With mien of the meek and the mind of a stoic,
They win their chief goal when they seem least alive.
The nations behold, yet can scarcely believe it
As Britain wins thro' to a triumph again;
And, wondering, ask how those dullards achieve it
In that darkest hour when all effort seems vain.
'Its dogged as does it.' No pause for regretting,
For sighing or sobbing she seeks in the fray;
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Walhalla
Dark lady of the laggard dawn,
Hiding within her gully deep;
Long have night's curtains been withdrawn
Before her earliest sun-shaft's peep.
And, long before the sun sinks down,
Eve's eager shadows creep her way,
Committing to the sheltered town
Nought but a niggard glimpse of day.
And shy enough she seems these days
Who was, long since, belle of them all;
When booted diggers went their way
Around about her ramparts tall.
Full generous she was and proud,
Proffering gold by ton on ton,
Where once the toiling, teaming crowd
Made most of her ungenerous fun.
For rich she was beyond belief
Full rich enough to make man's strife;
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Adulations Artful Aid
Some of us may be tall, ma'am;
Some of us may be dark;
Some handsome; tho' not all, ma'am,
Are touched by Beatury's spark.
But tall, and dark AND handsome, too?
Oh, lady! If you please! .. .. .. ..
It's really very nice of you;
But do you think they're really due
Superlatives like these?
We'd hate to doubt your word, ma'am,
Since you're informed in art,
Tho' much we'd have preferred, ma'am,
To play a humbler part.
But in meek deference to you,
Well, lady, we'll admit
We're tall and dark, and handsome, too,
It seems a rather boastful view,
But one gets used to it.
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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This Momentous Mummery
Well, I don't know. Maybe it's quite all right,
And maybe it is I who am perverse,
Finding in this unedifying sight
Mere mummery, and hearing but a blight
Of words and frowsty fustian - or worse
Maybe I'm wrong; and homosapiens yet,
Among the sentient, stays wise Nature's pet.
First the exordium, restrained and grim,
Stirring emotions, spreading subtle spells;
And then the swelling voice, the waving limb,
The flashing eye, the pep, the yells, the vim
The crashing peroration - and hell's bells! ...
Old stuff, so I was once led to suppose
Archaic stuff, and yet it goes, it goes.
Once Epictetus or - well, shall we say
Marcus Aurelius stirred in me a hope,
As reason grew and error fell away,
Giants might rise to lead us in our day
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Hitting It Up With Hitler
Now, who in the world can understand?
Since Tyranny, Freedom's whittler,
And the strong-arm band of the Iron Hand
Go hitting it up with Hitler,
Who can pretend to comprehend
This curious law-and-order
When generals dropp as the guns go pop,
And the princes streak for the border.
Where is the end when friend slays friend?
And the Factious rave and thunder,
When, trial denied, high chiefs have died,
And various 'vons' gone under;
When the President vows he will resign,
And then, somehow or other,
Is moved to sign a note benign,
Saying, 'Well done, brave brother!'
Man scarcely needs such trivial deeds
As Dillinger's or Capone's,
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Colac
A lady plump and pleasing
And generous and free,
Her life is spent in sleek content
Beside her inland sea;
And, round its pleasant waters,
Her pastures, rich and green,
Their treasures yield from many a field
To make her way serene.
A placid, laughing lady,
And prone to placid ways;
But yet, withal, she heeds the call
0f labor all her days
Of kind, congenial labor,
That holds nor fret nor stress
A farmer's wife whose busy life
Brings full, free happiness.
Men say the ocean covered
These fields in some dim age;
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Last Landfall
'Outgoing: the Ooonah for Burnie'....
How often the radio spoke;
Till the stout little ship and her journey
Grew into a mild sort of joke.
But no longer her donkeyman grapples
His slings by the sweet island shore
For a cargo of timber or apples.
The Oonah goes sailing no more.
No more; save the landfall she's making,
The last, on her funeral trip
To the land where she goes for her breaking
Grim graveyard of many a ship.
And a few, it may be, will go grieving
To know of that busy craft's fate,
Who many times hooved with her heaving
As Oonah rolled over the strait.
There many proud, tall-masted schooners
She passed in the night, ships o' sail;
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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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;
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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The Weary Philosopher
I can conceive no heav'nly bliss
More perfectly complete than this:
To sit and smoke and idly chew
Reflection's cud, with nought to do.
This is, in my pet social plan,
The right of ev'ry honest man.
I can conceive no punishment
For wicked men of evil bent,
Who cheat and lie and drink and rob,
More meet than giving them a job.
This is, to my unruffled mind,
Correction of the sternest kind.
I can conceive a world, in dreams;
A happy, restful world it seems;
A wise, well-ordered globe wherein
Men toil to expiate a sin,
While harmless and right-thinking folk
Have nought to do but sit and smoke.
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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