''In a year of silver living,
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I found my succor in the heather
Where I was lost and liked to be.''
- Broken, Robyn Archer
Memo to Robyn Archer: Love your work. Skywhale for ever. Can we have a Carpzilla dirigible and territory government funding for David Pope to turn the two characters into a graphic novel?
That said, Robyn, it's not too late to correct a major oversight in the centenary's moveable feast of ongoing delights.
You must have noticed by now that the Centenary of Canberra celebrations have been suffering from a terrible lack of poetry. While it's true that some speakers at a range of events have gone from bad to verse, the sad fact is we have marked this year almost entirely in prose (with the odd ballet about a building thrown in, of course).
It was not always thus; when Canberra was first hitting its straps, way back in those giddy, heady roaring '20s days, when visions of the future were writ large in publications such as the 1925 ''Xmas edition'' of Canberra Illustrated, the poetry was inescapable (regardless of how hard you tried).
Who can forget the ethereal majesty of such works as Roderic Quinn's Canberra: The Pride of Time, which prophetically proclaimed:
Glowing bright 'neath moonlight skies
And at morning's golden prime,
Here a city soon shall rise
That shall prove the Pride of Time
Here, with turret, tower and spire
Looking down on park and lawn,
It shall catch the sunset fire
And the rosy light of dawn.
And:
Flaunting high and shrilling high
In a glorious day to be,
Here shall Triumph's banner fly,
Here shall trumpet victory:
Here shall Wisdom, deep and wide,
Seek to win the best for all,
And great Thought and Deed abide
In a nation's capital.
Is there a contemporary poetaster willing to cross pens with Walter Jago, billed in 1925 as ''Editor of Aussie magazine'' and the author of Canberra?
White capped and proud the green hills stand,
And to their tops uproll
The silent wisdom of the Gods,
The dumb thoughts of the soul.
In calm repose Canberra lies,
And her new spirit tells,
That strength abides in hills like those majestic sentinels.
Dundee's bridges over the River Tay had their own McGonagall to dissect their weaknesses and to sing their praises:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
But nobody has come forward to sprinkle the Commonwealth and Kings Avenue bridges with the spirit of poesy. Where is the Tennyson of Tuggeranong, the Emerson of Manuka, the Paterson of Parkes, the Lawson of Mawson, Mitchell's Morant or Russell's Ruskin?
Ms Archer, given you are a poet of no mean ability yourself (see above), it's not good enough, I tell you; Canberrans have had to live with the prosaic for long enough.
Let us cap this centennial year with a rhapsody in rhyme.
- Gang-Gang
Army and a leggy
As an aside, the 1925 Canberra Illustrated could not help taking a gentle swipe at the Royal Military College, Duntroon - an institution that actually pre-dated the establishment of the city.
''Whizzbang'', after singing the institution's virtues at some length, notes: ''The only disconcerting problem connected with the military college is the enormous expense it entails.
''According to the official report for the year 1923-24 the net cost of maintaining Duntroon was 38,771 pounds. As there were only 41 students in attendance that year it means the training of these future staff officers is costing Australia considerably more than 900 pounds per head per annum or between 3000 and 4000 each for a total course of four years.''