The Banana's Lullaby

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



When grandma wished to keep her fruit
Her apples she would take
And put them on a bed of straw
At rest, but wide awake;
But newer days have newer modes,
And now, that it may keep,
They give an orange opiates
 And sing it off to sleep.

And they're telling bedtime stories to bananas,
And rocking little raspberries to rest.
They will dope an apple silly,
And it wakes in Piccadilly
From a beauty sleep that makes it look its best.

It seems a heartless kind of trick
To play on helpless pears;
To lull them off to slumberland
And soothe their nervous cares,
Only to wake them up again,
Weeks after, on a plate,
On the day of execution
To announce their cruel fate.

But they're telling bedtime stories to bananas,
And putting plums to by-by on a ship,
And they never have a notion
They have been across the ocean,
So they even miss the pleasure of the trip.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

49 sec read
115

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABXBXCXC DEFFE XGAGXHIH DJIIJ
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 837
Words 164
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 5, 8, 5

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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