Song of Snobs

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



When Leonardo was a lad there was a certain set
Who snubbed him most outrageously - in fact, they snub him yet
 He wasn't in the fashion, so he wasn't in the fold;
 Before his death he was too new, and now he grows too old.
Because his art was new to them the snobs of Florence laughed;
And now, because he isn't new, the moderns scorn his craft.
'Da Vinci? Don't be crude, my dear! Call him an artist? Pshaw!
Why that old anachronism, so they say, knew how to draw!'

They have wandered thro' the ages, mouthing cliches as they go.
At first nights, and private views, 'mid the people 'one should know.'
  But the artist goes on laughing as thro' every age he's laughed
  At snobs who patronise the 'Arts,' but boggle at the craft.

When Shakespeare sought draw the crowds and please the taste of town
And watched box office takings with a worn and worried frown,
  Kit Marlowe knew, Ben Jonson knew what stuff was in the lad;
  But the dilettanti voted him quite definitely bad.
The fellow simply stole his plots, they said with lofty sneers,
And served them up most vulgarly to tickle groundling's ears.
  'Will Shakespeare?  That cheap showman!
  Why the man's quite gauche, my dear!
I prefer them cultivated like dear Bacon and de Vere. '

So reputations surge and sink as lifts and ebbs the tide,
Now wallowing within the trough, now on the crest they ride.
  But the snobs are ever with us, snobs of art, of place, of pelf.
  And reading this, I rather think I might be one myself.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:24 min read
83

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABBCCXX DDCC EEFFGGXHH IIJJ
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 1,468
Words 277
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 4, 9, 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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