A Thermometrical Ballade

Theres a wind up that licks like a flame,
And the sun is a porthole of hell.
Now evanish prim notions of shame,
And the craving to look rather well,
In pyjamas youre never a swell,
And youve chosen some roomily made.
Oh! for ices these pangs to dispel,
Its one hundred and nine in the shade!

We have limped in from tennis.That game !,
Id as soon with the damned where they dwell
Stoke a furnace and bathe in the same!
Theres no drink human craving to quell,
Not thin chablis nor sweet muscatel.
Never more shall we see, Im afraid,
The cool shallows, the pale asphodel.
Its one hundred and nine in the shade.

You recline an invertebrate frame
In the moisture your atoms expel,
Gainst the fates very feebly declaim,
All too limp to rise up and rebel.
Action flies and mosquitoes compel.
We make pitiful fight gainst the raid
With a cloying and nauseous smell
In one hundred and nine in the shade.

ENVOY

Here might solids of Hamlet dispel.
Quick the answer to prayer that he prayed.
Human flesh turns to dew neath the spell
Of one hundred and nine in the shade.

Edward

Edward Dyson was a versatile Australian writer and poet known for his prose and poetry that vividly depicted the lives and experiences of miners and working-class people in Australia. Born on March 4, 1865, in Ballarat, Victoria, Dyson worked in various manual labor roles in the mining industry before turning to writing. His works often drew from his firsthand experiences and offered a unique perspective on the struggles and triumphs of everyday Australians. Dyson passed away on August 22, 1931.

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English

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Fragment.

From an epistle written when the thermometer stood at 98 degrees in the shade.



Oh! for the temperate airs that blow
    Upon that darling of the sea,
Where neither sunshine, rain, nor snow,
    For three days hold supremacy;
But ever-varying skies contend
The blessings of all climes to lend,
To make that tiny, wave-rocked isle,
In never-fading beauty smile.
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Thy beechen woods, thy heathery mountains,
Thy lawny uplands, where the shadow
    Of many a giant oak is sleeping;
The tangled copse, the sunny meadow,
    Through which the summer rills run weeping.
Oh, land of flowers! while sinking here
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Hark, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and water- blowballs, down.
We are there, when we hear a shout
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover
Makes dither, makes hover
And the riot of a rout
Of, it must be, boys from the town
Bathing: it is summer's sovereign good.

By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise
He drops towards the river: unseen
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys
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Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question Ive put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, were alone in the loft,

I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead through, and done with, this many a year:
Lets have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up its ear!

See, the church empties apace:
Fast they extinguish the lights.
Hallo there, sacristan! Five minutes grace!
Heres a crank pedal wants setting to rights,
Baulks one of holding the base.

See, our huge house of the sounds,
Hushing its hundreds at once,
Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds!
O you may challenge them, not a response
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(AFTER J. D.)

Maecenas. John. George. Arthur. Grant. Richard.

                MAECENAS.

What ho! a merry Christmas! Pff!
Sharp blows the frosty blizzard's whff!
Pile on more logs and let them roll,
And pass the humming wassail-bowl!

                    JOHN.

The wassail-bowl! the wind is snell!
Drinc hael! and warm the poet's pell!

                MÆCENAS.

Richard! say something rustic.

                RICHARD.

                    Lo!
The customary mistletoe,
Prehensile on the apple-bough,
Invites the usual kiss.

                GEORGE.

            And now
Cathartic hellebore should be
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                GRANT.

Now holly-berries have ...

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                        Ah me!

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                    O fatal time,
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Forth from the dust and din,
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Of that first sudden plash of dawn,
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In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn
Forward and up, in wider and wider way,
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