The Singing Garden     -     by C J Dennis

The Singing Garden

CONTENTS

SPRING

• Dawn (Verse)
• The Way of the Vandal
• Forest Sanctuary (Verse)
• Green Walls (Verse)
• Morning Glory (Verse)
• Blandishing the Birds
• Songs of Bush Birds
  • The Wedge-tailed Eagle
  • The Coachwhip Bird
  • The Welcome Swallow
  • The Wattle Bird
  • The Eastern Shrike-tit
  • The Spinebill Honeyeater
  • The Flame-breasted Robin
  • The Firetail Finches
  • The Pallid Cuckoo
  • The English Blackbird
  • The Bronze Cuckoo
  • The King Parrot
  • The Tawny Frogmouth

SUMMER

• Summer (Verse)
• This Lonely Forest
• North Wind (Verse)
• Heat Wave (Verse)
• Recuperation
• Songs of Bush Birds
  • The Grey Thrush
  • The Rufous Fantail
  • The Scrub Wren
  • The Kookaburra
  • The English Goldfinch
  • The Grey Goshawk
  • The Grey Fantail
  • The Little Black Cormorant
  • The Golden Whistler
  • The Treecreeper
  • The Gang Gang
  • The Singing Honeyeater
  • The Boobook Owl
  • The Lyretail
  • The Black and White Fantail
  • The Dusky Wood-swallow

AUTUMN

• Autumn (Verse)
• The Kookaburra Murder Case
• Indian Summer (Verse)
• First Frost (Verse)
• The Case of Long John Silver
• Songs of Bush Birds
  • The Magpie Lark
  • The Silver-eye
  • The Crimson Parrot
  • The White Cockatoo
  • The Butcher Bird
  • The Blue Kingfisher
  • The Ground Thrush
  • The Sparrow
  • Starlings
  • The Indian Myna
  • The Yellow-tailed Thornbill
  • The Wonga Pigeon

WINTER

• Winter (Verse)
• Birdland on the Dole
• The Tree (Verse)
• The Besting of Bombastes
• Songs of Bush Birds
  • The Blue Wren
  • Currawong, Pied
  • The Black Cockatoo
  • The Satin Bower Bird
  • The Bronzewing Pigeon
  • The Crow (Australian Raven)
  • The Yellow Robin
  • The Pink-breasted Robin
  • The Magpie

Epilogue

• Promise of Spring (Verse)
• The Quiet Hour
• Dusk (Verse)

The Singing Garden by CJ Dennis

Spinebill Honeyeater

Australian poet CJ Dennis (1876-1938) produced several famous verse stories. The Songs of A Sentimental Bloke, The Moods of Ginger Mick, The Glugs of Gosh and others are well known and readily obtainable at new and second-hand book stores, or can easily be found on-line. Fewer people, though, are familiar with his last book, The Singing Garden, published in 1935, three years before he died.

The Singing Garden is not a verse story but contains dozens of poems and several essays "Den" wrote about the birds he knew from around his home, "Arden", in the small forest-encircled town of Toolangi, nestled in the hills north of Melbourne.

The poems are delightful personifications of the birds, written from the bird's imagined point of view. They are amusing, entertaining and even instructive, and demonstrate that nature, and particularly birds, were keenly observed and loved by the poet.

Firetail Finch

Indian Myna

The poems first appeared as a series in The Herald newspaper in Melbourne from 1932 to 1933. They were collected and published with additional poems and essays in The Singing Garden in 1935. It appears that the book has never been reprinted and copies of it are now very scarce and difficult to find.

On Bushpea, we are therfore delighted and priviliged to make available on-line, some for the very first time, all of the poems and essays from The Singing Garden. Simply click on the links in the Contents list at the left of this page.

To learn more of C J Dennis and to read more of his work, visit Perry Middlemiss's informative Australian Literature website.