I often pause to contemplate
The sadly barren mental state
Of persons whom it is my fate
To meet on Monday morning.
They should be, after Sunday's rest,
Alert, clear-minded, full of zest;
But everywhere they are oppressed,
Bad-tempered, dull and yawning.
But I? I'm always strangely bright,
Primed with ideas and full of fight,
With brain alert and eye alight
With rare exhilaration:
All due, no doubt to my wise bent
To do no thing I should repent,
And to a Sunday wisely spent
In pious contemplation.
I do not wish to set myself
Upon some loft moral shelf
And treat my brother man, poor elf,
To haughty patronising.
And yet I feel I have to say
That I regard the laggard way
That men approach their work this day
As utterly surprising.
Oh, I could write, this gladsome morn,
With vigor of a man new-born
Rare verses, full of lilting scorn
About my fellow's failings;
Or I could write on politics
And heave a hundred verbal bricks,
Using the rhymster's thousand tricks
In homilies and railings.
But I resist; for, being kind
I know that human nature's blind
And weak and frail; I have no mind
To call down envious curses.
And, tho' I tremble on the verge,
I manfully resist the urge,
And sing, where I might shout and splurge,
These rather halting verses.
First published in The Herald, 28 April 1930
Author reference sites: C.J. Dennis, Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
