Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses — A Closer Reading

Parody as a Lens on Colonial Life

The opening poem's debt to Gray is not merely decorative. By replacing Gray's 'lowly bed' with a 'jagged tiles, that low-built roof,' Dum-Dum signals that his subject is not universal human mortality but the specific discomforts and absurdities of imperial service. The 'time-gun' and 'bugler' root the scene in military routine, while the 'ambiguous mule' that 'bewails' its inability to eat its own blanket introduces a strain of absurdist humor that recurs throughout.

This parodic method allows the poet to critique without overt condemnation. The 'weary diners' and 'thirsty Thomas' are treated sympathetically, even as their rituals are gently mocked. The reader is invited to share the joke, but also to notice the underlying melancholy: 'melancholy silence rules the scene.' The parody thus becomes a vehicle for ambivalence, balancing affection for the community with awareness of its limitations.

The Hockey Match: Epic Scale and Domestic Farce

'The Last Hockey' demonstrates Dum-Dum's most sustained use of mock-heroic. The poem adapts Tennyson's 'The Passing of Arthur' to describe a women's hockey match between 'Damsel v. Dame,' complete with a 'bold Sir Referee' and 'the mournful guardian of the Sacred Goal.' The incongruity between the elevated style and the trivial subject—'the muffled shin, / The sudden whistle'—generates comedy, but also reveals the poet's fascination with the physicality and chaos of the game.

The central figure, Susan, is described with a mixture of admiration and alarm: 'Deftly she smote, and drave / On, and so paddled swiftly in its wake.' Her 'strange diagonal' movement and eventual fall, which exposes 'black stockings, mystic, wonderful,' become the climax of the poem. The coolies' chortling and the ladies' 'self-approved' seating suggest a social hierarchy that the match temporarily disrupts. The poem ends with the Referee carried off in Susan's litter, his views drowned by a 'sweet, small song' that parodies the dirge from Tennyson's original.

Recurring Motifs: The Time-Gun, the Hills, and the 'Shiny East'

Several motifs link the excerpts. The 'time-gun' that opens the collection reappears in the contents list with 'Ode to the Time-Gun of Gurrumbad,' suggesting a running joke about military punctuality and noise. The 'Hills' are another constant: poems like 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Ever Getting to the Hills' and 'To My Lady of the Hills' indicate a longing for escape from the heat and tedium of the plains, a theme familiar in Anglo-Indian writing.

The phrase 'Shiny East' in the author's note is deliberately ironic, undercutting romantic notions of India. Dum-Dum's India is a place of 'native butter,' 'wet canteens,' and 'coolies' who 'chortle' at the mishaps of their rulers. Yet the poet's tone is rarely cruel; he includes himself in the comedy. The 'Re-collected Verses' of the title—poems 'overhauled' from earlier collections—suggest a process of retrospection, as if the author is sifting through memories of a world already passing.

Voice and Audience: The Insider's Irony

Dum-Dum's persona is that of a seasoned colonial servant, writing for an audience that shares his experiences. The author's note addresses 'Readers in, or of, India' directly, and the poems are filled with references—'dunder-stick,' 'Aryan Brothers,' 'coolie'—that would require glossing for outsiders. The humor depends on recognition: the reader must know what a 'time-gun' is, or why a mule eating its blanket is funny.

Yet the poet also anticipates a wider readership, hoping the volume 'may not be without interest to those whose knowledge of the Shiny East is derived from hearsay.' This dual address creates a tension between insider jokes and explanatory gestures. The excerpts suggest that Dum-Dum manages this balance by keeping the irony light and the scenes vivid. Even without footnotes, the physical details—'jagged tiles,' 'autumn grass,' 'the shuddering Orient skies'—convey a sense of place that transcends the specific references.

Reading these excerpts in sequence reveals a poet who uses parody not as mere imitation but as a tool for observation. The movement from the Gray-inspired nocturne to the Tennysonian hockey match shows a writer experimenting with form to capture the peculiar texture of Anglo-Indian life. The later poems, hinted at in the contents—'Elegy on a Rhinoceros,' 'The Shores of Nothing'—may deepen the note of melancholy that surfaces in the opening. A first reader would do well to attend to the shifting registers: the same voice that mocks the 'time-gun' can also, in 'Kal!' or 'To an Elephant,' turn unexpectedly tender.

There are books that feel less like something you finished and more like a room you wandered through at dusk. Rhymes of the East left that impression on me—its sharp little parodies giving way, so gently, to something almost tender. It made me think of The Book of Humorous Verse — Edition Insights, which holds that same quiet shift between a grin and a sigh, the way laughter sometimes carries a memory without trying.