Hats

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



I sing of the hat, of the human lid,
The cadev, the tile, or whatever you please,
The thing that we wear - or our fathers did
For the making of comfort and greater ease.
Man suffers a roof up over his head
'Gainst the wind and the weather, to keep them out;
But as for a woman, when all is said,
It's the very last thing she thinks about.

Why queer 'creations' should deck her brow,
Or the back of her neck, or her small pink ear,
She hasn't the least idea, I vow;
For out of the blue come things of fear,
And, all in a night as it were - like that
Every matron and maid in town
Abandons the saucer she had for a hat
For a thing like a billy-can upside down.

Weird fruit salads and flower-decked tiles,
 Dingle-dangles, roosters and bows,
Furs and feathers have served the styles
And what is the next craze no man knows.
But the cruel thing that I have heard said
I still deny, as I ever denied:
That the crazy affairs on the feminine head
Give evidence clear of the stuff inside.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

59 sec read
97

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCD EXEXFGFG HXHXCICI
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 965
Words 196
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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