Publication: Melbourne Herald
Date: 31 July 1922
In this morning’s papers we are told that Mr. Lloyd George says that the earth is swept with the peril of peace, and the there is a growing suspicion that conflict will come again. Mr. Hughes declares that parliament dictatorship is a dark and menacing evil.
Brothers! I fear to plumb a mind that is another’s. Yet, Why should politicians sometimes get So suddenly overcharged with awful gloom, And talk as if from some dank cyprussed tomb. A voice of doom Were Bidding us despair— Like Job’s comforters all bowed with care Who see this world through yellow, jaundiced glasses, And tell us that all pleasure quickly passes. Brothers! Mark how sad prophesying smothers The joy of life; And man and wife Walk through the world bowed down in direst woe, Because some politician, pitching low His well-worn voice, Bids us no more rejoice. Tell me why does some sad, low- moaning prophet Serve up such fare; and say, why do we scoff it? Ere that dread August day, nineteen fourteen, It seems to me that we had ever been Careless and gay, Dreaming the happy, sunlit days away. Brothers, why not? Why have we got The grievous, blue megrims, this per- nicious pip? Is it, indeed, that we have lost our grip On happiness, and gaze with moody eyes On all life’s scheme because we’ve grown too wise? Or, chasing butterflies, Have we lost power to see The wisdom of a measured gaiety? One half the world goes mad with joy and jazz, As never has One half the world before—at least I think not— The other ones enjoy, not jazz not, drink not. But sit and utter gloomy prophecies Bidding the nations fall upon their knees And cease to trip terpsichorean one beat. Brothers, I own the problem’s got me beat. Shall we once more view life with perhaps levity? Or are we truly dancing to the devil?