Analysis of The Dove Has A Word

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



With a sprig in my beak, I repeatedly seek
 For a spot where a poor bird may rest,
While tumultuous man strives in vain for a plan
 That may build me a permanent nest.
But I'm sick of this search.  All I ask is a perch
In a cope, neither gaudy nor grand;
And they need me, they say in a 'passionate' way;
But as soon as I venture to land
There's a clashing of scabbards; a barking of dogs
And I'm off once again to the ambient fogs.

I'd a job long ago - for old Noah, you know
And I hadn't much trouble with that.
But this mechanised age makes the searching a rage
For a synthetic Mont Ararat.
I have sought me a home o'er Locarno and Rome,
O'er Geneva, week after drear week;
I have hovered and wheeled and while the nations appealed
But as soon as a haven I seek
There's a beating of drums, and a yelling of fear,
And I'm off once again to the calm stratosphere.

And now sounds a cooing, a tentative wooing,
Where Italy's olive groves gleam
And they press a bland oil from the fruits of their soil.
Is it olive they offer?  Or, wait - they proffer
That oil named for Pollux's twin
That unguent, whose use 'mid Rome's rashly obtsue,
Helped the Fascist ideal to win?
If 'tis this, I am off to the cradle of stars
For a home with old bluff, unequivocal Mars!


Scheme ABXBXCXCDX XXXXXAXAEE XXXXFDFGG
Poetic Form
Metre 101011101001 101101111 11001101101 111101001 111111111101 001101011 011111001001 111111011 10101101011 011101101001 101101111011 011011011 1111101001 10010110 11110110101 1001011011 1110010101001 111101011 101011001011 01110110110 011010010010 11001011 011011101111 111011011110 111111 11111111 10100111 111111101011 10111101001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,239
Words 250
Sentences 11
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 10, 10, 9
Lines Amount 29
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 319
Words per stanza (avg) 83
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:18 min read
79

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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