Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis: Verses about Mysticism

Once have we bashed him on the head;
Twice have we stabbed him deep;
Thrice have we left him there for dead
And yet he will not sleep;
But rise up from out his grave
To gibber and repine
And generally misbehave
By raving as lost spirits rave:
'Oh, Body-Bodyline!'

We've sneaked on him at dead of night
And bashed his grinning face
And flung him down and rammed him tight
Into his resting place.
We've tied a weight about his neck
And cast him to the brine;
But, lo, next day, he's back on deck,
Like some damp victim of a wreck,
To babble, 'Bodyline!'

We've exorcised him with due rite
Of candle, book and bell;
But back he toddled in the night
His sad tale to re-tell.
His grizly mien, when he appears,
Sends shivers down our spine
And wakes our superstitious fears
What time he blubbers thro' his tears,
'Pity poor Bodyline!'

Alas! he can not die, poor bloke,
And cease from haunting us
Les England, with a single stroke,
Gives him his quietus.
Then at the bleak crossroads shall we,
When ne'er a moon doth shine,
Inter his bones triumphantly
And write above, with savage glee:
'Hic jacet Bodyline.'

'Outgoing: the Ooonah for Burnie'....
How often the radio spoke;
Till the stout little ship and her journey
Grew into a mild sort of joke.
But no longer her donkeyman grapples
His slings by the sweet island shore
For a cargo of timber or apples.
The Oonah goes sailing no more.

No more; save the landfall she's making,
The last, on her funeral trip
To the land where she goes for her breaking
Grim graveyard of many a ship.
And a few, it may be, will go grieving
To know of that busy craft's fate,
Who many times hooved with her heaving
As Oonah rolled over the strait.

There many proud, tall-masted schooners
She passed in the night, ships o' sail;
While stars winked o'er fond honeymooners
Who whispered soft words by her rail.
And tourists and grave politicians,
Who knew the old Oonah full well,
In all sorts of weather conditions,
Have had many a story to tell.

And many a soul who sailed with her,
Since Oonah first breasted the foam,
Has taken the long voyage thither,
To every man's ultimate home.
Who knows now what mystical journey
Those sail, to the sounds of high mirth
As a ghost-ships heads hull-down for Burnie,
With a complement not of the earth.

An 'Ode to the Moon' did he indite
With his two-and-half soul-power.
('Twas the child of a starlit summer night,
Begot by a gloomy hour.)


And he vowed it was a work immense,
And he quoted it a lot,
And be published it at his own expense;
But the cold, hard world said - 'Rot!'


And he wrote him ringing verse of horse,
And the stockman, and his pipe,
And the brooding bushland; but, of course,
The world just murmured - 'Tripe!'


So he sat him down for another fling,
And his time-exposure mind
Evolved a topical sort of thing,
Of a gay and hum'rous kind.


And he looked to see the world go wild,
And laugh until it cried;
But the verse was poor and the humor mild,
And - 'Bosh!' the tired world sighed.


Then he oiled his weird, ball-bearing mind,
In a dull, despairing mood,
And he wrote a thing of a cryptic kind,
Which nobody understood.


'Twas an ode to the 'Umph' and the 'Thingmebob,'
With a lilt and a right good ring,
And hints of a smirk, a snarl, a sob,
And a murky murmuring.


Nay, nobody understood a word,
Nor strove to understand;
But few dared say it was absurd,
So most agreed 'twas 'Grand!'


Then be let his hair grow lank and long,
And an air intense he got,
And ever he strove to nurse in song
The cult of the 'Dunnowhat.'


And now he never writes in vain,
But a famous man is he,
With a ten soul-power and a chuck-lathe brain,
And an air of mystery.


So, of his lot take heed; I wot
If you aspire to fame,
Don't waste a tune on horse or moon,
But rave of Whatsitsname;
It's tame,
But still it's Whatsitsname.