C. J. Dennis

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis (7 September 1876 – 22 June 1938), better known as C. J. Dennis, was an Australian poet and journalist known for his best-selling verse novel The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915). Alongside his contemporaries and occasional collaborators Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, Dennis helped popularise Australian slang in literature, earning him the title "the laureate of the larrikin".

Quotes

• Get a —— move on,
    Have some —— sense.
  Learn the —— art of
    Self de- —— -fence!
  • "The Austra-laise", Chorus, in The Bulletin (12 November 1908)

• It’s bad enough to be a bloke without one reel close friend;
  But when your dog gives you the bird it’s pretty near the end.
  • "The Vision", in Jim of the Hills (1919)

• Women is strange. You take my tip; I’m wise.
    I know enough to know I'll never know
  The ’uman female mind ...
  • "A Woman's Way", in Rose of Spadgers (1924)

• Of all the gems in this wide world
    (No matter what their hue be),
  The one I find most beautiful
    Is certainly the emerald.
  • Handwritten, with his autograph, for a girl named Ruby. Quoted in Alec H. Chisholm, The Making of a Sentimental Bloke (1946)

• It is on record (in a booklet written by Guy Innes) that when Dennis decided to migrate from South Australia he telegraphed his father, "Send ten pounds. Going Broken Hill", to which appeal the old man promptly replied, "Sending nothing. Go to hell!"
  • Quoted in Alec H. Chisholm, The Making of a Sentimental Bloke (1946)

• Wowser: an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder.
  • Quoted in Alec H. Chisholm, The Making of a Sentimental Bloke (1946)

• Oh, to be in England
    Now that Summer’s there!
  For who plays the Game in England
    Is each morning well aware
  That the cricket-pitch is water-logged,
  And the in-field’s wet and the out-field’s bogged:
    For it’s surely raining, anyhow,
    In England—now!
  • Quoted in Alec H. Chisholm, The Making of a Sentimental Bloke (1946)

• Now, a woman, she’s a woman. I ’ave fixed that for a cert.
  They’re jist as like as rows uv peas from ’at to ’em uv skirt.
  An’ then, they’re all so different, yeh find, before yeh’ve done,
  The more yeh know uv all uv ’em the less yeh know uv one.
  • "Doreen", in Selected Verse (1950)

• To mock the tree-lined highways of our dreaming,
    Winding to pleasant plains and sunlit hills,
  Loud-speakers yet may blare 'mid billboards screaming
    To hymn the praise of someone’s priceless pills.
  • "Postscript to Posterity", in Random Verse (1952)

• They say the whole world’s down and out;
    But here’s what I can’t see:
  If every land, beyond all doubt,
  In all the earth is up the spout—
    Then who's the mortgagee?
  • "Another Economic Riddle", in Random Verse (1952)

• But it must not be thought that I abjure all physical effort. Only the day before yesterday I pulled up a dandelion. Next week I shall probably be busy pulling up the two other dandelions that will inevitably spring up in that place to avenge their brother. Dandelions are like that.
  • "Amateur Amateur Gardeners", in Random Verse (1952)

• Professional gardeners are usually rather earthy uncommunicative men with a deliberate manner, a slight stoop and the dull-fish-like eye of the confirmed pessimist.
  • "Amateur Amateur Gardeners", in Random Verse (1952)

• For many years it has been my habit to divide gardeners into three classes. These are professional gardeners, professional amateur gardeners, and amateur amateur gardeners.
  • "Amateur Amateur Gardeners", in Random Verse (1952)

• You might grow bored with being good;
  And, furthermore, I think you would.
  • "Furthermore and Moreover", in Random Verse (1952)

• "How would I hold a husband? Is it that you’re askin’ me?
  If it’s needful to hold, that is easily told—
    Be the scruff of his neck!" said she.
  • "How to Hold a Husband", in Random Verse (1952)

• I sometimes think stone is too precious truly,
    Bronze far too permanent for human clods
  Whom men rush in to celebrate unduly:
    Immortal stuff is for immortal gods
  Carved by great artists. Let the celebration
    Of men be in such stuff as may be pulped;
  Reserve the rock for glorious inspiration:
    Venus to pose, Praxiteles to sculpt.
  • "Pulped for Posterity", in Random Verse (1952)

• I disapprove of people who moot things.
  • "A Round with Kipling", in Random Verse (1952)

• Of all the poetry I've read
  I’ve never yet seen one (he said)
  That couldn’t be, far as it goes,
  Much better written out in prose.
  It’s what they eat, I often think;
  Or, yet more likely, what they drink.
  Aw, poets! All the tribe, by heck,
  Give me a swift pain in the neck.
  • "Poets", in Random Verse (1952)

• 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.
  • "Songs of Snobs", in Random Verse (1952)

• Someone has said
  From the day we draw breath
  Until life be sped
  Two things are certain:
  Taxes and death.
  From the rise of the curtain,
  On life's dreary round,
  As hope wanes or waxes,
  Man ever found
  Two things are certain:
  Taxes and death—
  Especially taxes.
  • "Taxes", in Random Verse (1952)

The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke

• "Wot's in a name?" she sez. 'Struth, I dunno.
  Billo is just as good as Romeo.
  • V. The Play

• Willy! O 'ell! 'Ere wus a flamin' pill!
    A moniker that alwus makes me ill.
  "If it's the same to you, mum," I replies
    "I answer quicker to the name of Bill."
  • VIII. Mar

• Love is a gamble, an' there ain't no certs.
  • VIII. Mar

• Farmer! That's me! Wiv this 'ere strong right 'and
    I've gripped the plough; and blistered jist a treat.
  Doreen an' me 'as gone upon the land.
    Yours truly fer the burden an' the 'eat!
  • XII. Uncle Jim

• We done poor Muvver proud when she went out—
    A slap-up send-orf, trimmed wiv tears an' crape.
  • XII. Uncle Jim

• "A boy!" she sez. "An' bofe is doin' well!"
  I drops into a chair, an' jist sez—"'Ell!"
    It was a pray'r. I feels bofe crook an' glad. ...
    An' that's the strength of bein' made a dad.
  • XIII. The Kid

• Yeh live, yeh love, yeh learn; an' when yeh come
    To square the ledger in some thortful hour,
  The everlastin' answer to the sum
    Must allus be, "Where's sense in gittin' sour?"
  • XIV. The Mooch o' Life

• Livin' an' lovin'; learnin' day be day;
    Pausin' a minute in the barmy strife
  To find that 'elpin' others on the way
    Is gold coined fer your profit—sich is life.
  • XIV. The Mooch o' Life

• "Look fer yer profits in the 'earts o' friends,
  Fer 'atin' never paid no dividends."
  • XIV. The Mooch o' Life

• Livin' an' lovin'; learnin' to fergive
    The deeds an' words of some un'appy bloke
  Who's missed the bus—so 'ave I come to live,
    An' take the 'ole mad world as 'arf a joke.
  • XIV. The Mooch o' Life

• Sittin' at ev'nin' in this sunset-land,
  Wiv 'Er in all the World to 'old me 'and,
    A son, to bear me name when I am gone. ...
    Livin' an' lovin'—so life mooches on.
  • XIV. The Mooch o' Life

See also

• Randolph Bedford
• Norman Lindsay