All romantic and fantastic hopes of man ever reaching the moon have been finally dispersed by a scientist's announcement that above the stratosphere is a heat-belt so terrific that no machine could function in it.

Mr Blenkinsop and I
   Are much concerned to learn
That, somewhere in the further sky,
A frightful heat-belt lurks on high,
   Where torrid ethers burn.
And I and Mr Blenkinsop
   We take it rather hard,
Because all work will have to stop
Henceforth within the small work-shop
   In Blenkinsop's back-yard.
 
For many years we labored there,
   In Blenkinsop's back-yard.
And, in our town, plain folk would stare
And mutter: "That's the learned pair
   Who'll win the world's regard."
We planned a gadget in that shop
   To journey to the moon;
And deferential friends would stop
To speak to me and Blenkinsop
   And ask of our balloon.
 
We'd built the thing of bits and scraps,
   And loomed amongst our peers
As very scientific chaps;
Tho' privily we meant, perhaps,
   To dodge the trip for years,
If not for e'er.  But, while remained
   The possibility,
Vast oodles of renown we gained,
And fulsome praise our townspeople rained
   On Blenkinsop and me.
 
Alas for me and Blenkinsop!
   Our name is mud in town;
For we have come an awful flop.
Gone is the kudos of our shop
   And gone our vast renown.
Now I and Blenkinsop, my pard,
   Walk 'mid derisive howls;
Although his lot is not so hard,
For in the Blenkinsop back-yard
   Our ship now shields his fowls.

"Den"
Herald, 31 August 1935, p6