Disillusionment and loss of innocence/wit and humour

Unlike earlier works by Australian poets who focused on the nation's beauty and potential,
the poems of A.D. Hope reflects the disillusionment and pessimism in the mid-twentieth
century. It also foreshadows the emergence of post-war literature that would critically
examine the loss of innocence in Australian identity and history. In his poems, he has used an
erudite mind and a wicked wit and humour to devastating effect as a critic.

The poem “Death of the Bird '' generates a witty understanding of the idea of death against
the vast indifference of the universe to it. The poem explores the cyclical nature of life and
death through the migratory journey of a bird. It mirrors Hope's other works' themes of loss,
memory, and the complexities of the natural world. The bird's journey parallels the
experience of the indigenous people in Australia as well as a general human experience, as
they all seek "home" in distant lands and contemplates its own mortality. The bird's eventual
disorientation and death in "waste leagues of air" and "trackless world" highlight the
challenges and uncertainty that accompany even the most familiar of journeys. The
indifference of the "great earth" to the bird's demise reflects the impersonal nature of the
universe and the insignificance of individual lives within its vastness.

In the poem “Australia,” the poet A. D. Hope describes his very disillusioned views of his
home country. The witty association of Australia to trees, which are “drab green and desolate
grey,” indicates that he finds Australia very dull. He likens Australia to the Sphinx, using the
words “demolished” and “worn away”: Australia has nothing left to offer and is broken. The
sarcastic humour is evident when Hope says that people who move here are rather
unwelcome, and they are "second-hand Europeans” that grow rapidly on these “alien
shores". He sees these people as people who “drain” Australia” . For him it is a" vast parasite
robber state” which has lost its original vitality.

It appears that the bone in “Meditation on a Bone” will have something positive written on it,
but the tone alters from a surrealist approach to a dark and melancholy vibe. That’s why, as
the poem progresses, the title becomes ironic and satiric. Throughout the poem the speaker is
expressing the hate the scholar possesses towards the woman that betrayed him and
meditation is symbolic of relaxation and emptiness of the mind. The witty delineation of how
a legacy, dark and negative, has made its way into the present cultural identity of Australia
reverberates throughout the poem. From the perspective of gender, the phallic understanding
of the bone is indeed humourous.

Marvell’s coy mistress is humorously turned by A. D. Hope into la belle dame sans merci in
“His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell”. The witty association between the coy mistress and
Australia as well as the European colonial forces and Marvell is interesting which generates a
nuanced understanding of gender and colonialism. Australia for her ruined innocence must
write back like the coy mistress to the imperial male force and destabilise its power.

The paper tigers in “The Tiger” are made witty embodiments of materialism, the big
corporations, consumerism, the culture of conformity ruining innocent lives in Australian
postcolonial urban scape. The real tigers are the embodiment of whatever stands against that:
independence of spirit, creativity, the natural world. Here it may seem to be a bit of a
contradiction in the poem, in that in line seven we have ‘the harmless paper tiger’ but then in
line twelve we are told that it ‘riddles and corrupts the heart’, which doesn’t sound very
harmless. Meat and blood can be understood as erotic ideas signifying symbolically the
tiger’s interest in the prey sexually. Perhaps Hope means that the paper tiger is a purely
human construct that has only such power over us as we allow it to have, as compared with
the real tiger that exists in its own dangerous, exhilarating reality beyond us.

Therefore, Hope's poems use wit and humour to give us an ironical view of Australian
identity and society suffering from a sense of utter disillusionment due to the loss of vitality
and innocence.