“An Old Master” – verse 16

October 31st, 2015 | C. J. Dennis, News, Poems for adults

Finally, we come to verse 16.

Line 3
“that he draws the old age pension” replaced “merely that he draws the pension”

That’s it!

Michael also sent me the title page for “An Old Master”, which appears to stand as a separate document. It is dated 24.3.10, the day after the date on the page of the manuscript itself, which would suggest that the whole poem – with revisions – was written over the course of a single day. This probably should not come as a great surprise, as we know that Dennis worked fast.

Here is the title page:

There are some minor changes between the final version of this manuscript and the poem as it appeared in “The Bulletin” later in 1910, but I’ll leave you to look those up for yourself.

Speaking for myself, it has been very exciting to have this rare glimpse into the working of the mind of that wonderful poet, C.J. Dennis!

There are a couple of pages just of cross-outs also. They don’t add anything particularly new, but I will post them here for the sake of completeness.

Thank you, David Hume, for bringing these wonderful documents to light!

Thank you also to David Campbell for reviewing my rendition of these corrections, and making a number of helpful suggestions and further corrections.