Tasmania's premier, Mr Ogilvie, declares that Melbourne by day is a garden; by night, a cemetery.
Melbourne by day: a city, flower-laden
An avenue of loveliness each street,
Tree-lined; a beauteous blossom every maiden --
Well, one in every score or so you meet --
Skyline and vista, river and rooftop gleaming,
Aesthetically rated very high;
Tower, majestic dome and tall spire dreaming
Up to a perfect sky.
Arcadian city, garden-fringed and gay,
An artist's dream come true -- Melbourne by day.
Melbourne by night: a graveyard given over
To ghouls and ghosts of an unholy gloom,
Grim, silent night, wherein a spectral rover
Steals down the street to fade into its tomb
Glumly, to dodge the doleful cop patrolling
His dismal beat before the shrouded bars;
And, over all, the curfew, tolling, tolling,
Up to the sneering stars;
The buildings, mausoleums coldly white
As giants' sepulchres: Melbourne by night.
Melbourne beneath the sun: a garden scented,
Where merry citizens frisk to and fro --
Phyllis and Strephon, smiling and contented,
Gathering gorgeous blossoms as they go.
Scent of boronia and garnered wattles --
Five-thirty! Traffic swells, and no man lags --
Burghers, at grovers' counters, snatching bottles
To stow in luncheon bags
And hasten homeward ere the day be done
And grief descends: Melbourne beneath the sun.
Melbourne when darkness falls: a burial acre --
Necropolis, wrapt in a clammy shroud.
Even the merry moon would fain forsake her
And hide her gay, fat face behind a cloud.
Athwart the sky the tortured storm-wrack sweeping
Stoops to the fog that up from seaward rolls
With Gloom's grim cohorts ever creeping, creeping
To claim men's hopeless souls ...
Hark! From suburbia a gay voice calls,
"Here's luck, old dears!" Melbourne when darkness falls.
First published in The Herald, 18 August 1937
Author reference sites: C.J. Dennis, Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
