Analysis of Rivers and Mountains
Yarra and Murray,
Murrumbidgee and Darling,
Lachlan and Derwent,
Swan River and Hawkesbury River . . .
By your old or your new names;
And all your brothers and sisters,
Numberless rivers, creeks, and billabongs
What can you not all tell me
Of the days gone by?
Do not your waters,
Yellow and crimson in the dawn,
Whisper, whisper round your banks?
And cannot I pry out the age-old secrets
That they whisper?
Secrets of
The days gone by —
Of blacks’ camp
And coo-ee cry.
Do not your gumtrees,
Ringed with the marks of many floods,
Seared and blackened by many fires,
Fling grotesque shadows on your waters?
And cannot I read
Those strange hieroglyphs?
They are wed so with the movement of the water
And the movement of the trees,
And with the sound of the water,
With wind-ripples and reed-ripples,
And with the patient sound
Of the wind in the trees,
And with the quiet drifting
Of leaves and bark
On the surface of the water.
What do they spell,
Those strange hieroglyphs?
Secrets of
The days gone by —
Of blacks’ camp
And coo-ee cry.
All you ranges,
Blue Mountains, Dandenongs, Plenty,
Flinders, Barossa, MacDonnell,
By your old or your new names,
And all your numberless brothers and sisters,
Ranges and ridges, cuestas and monadnocks,
Fertile and beckoning or craggy and forbidding,
What can you not all tell me
Of the days gone by?
Know you not the secrets of the totems?
Are you not great ancestors yourselves,
Or, some of you —
Like the furrow of Ilbumeraka —
Dragged and scooped and tortured from the plains
By the swishing tnatantja?
Were not some of you
Formed by the writhings of a hideous snake,
Like that of Emianga,
Or made as by the digging of Lukara
Among the roots of the acacias
For the prized and juicy tjameta worms?
When dawn is kindling along your crests,
Or when your flames die into darkness,
Or while you stand boldly or cloud-hidden
Through the main time of daylight,
You still have your secrets about you,
And shall have ever.
Secrets of
The days gone by —
Of blacks’ camp
And coo-ee cry.
Scheme | abcdEfeAG fxxxd HGIG exffcJ dkdxckbxdxJ HGIG xaxEfebAG xxlbxxlxbaex xxxcld HGIG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (29%) Etheree (29%) |
Metre | 1010 1010 1001 1100110 1111111 01110010 110101 1111111 10111 11110 10010001 1010111 01011101110 1110 101 0111 111 0111 1111 11011101 101011010 10111110 01011 1101 111110101010 0010101 01011010 11100110 010101 101001 0101010 1101 10101010 1111 1101 101 0111 111 0111 1110 110110 101010 1111111 011110010 10010101 1001001100010 1111111 10111 1110101010 11111001 1111 101011 101010101 1011 01111 1101101001 1111 111101011 0101101 10101011 111100111 111110110 1111101110 101111 111110011 01110 101 0111 111 0111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 2,044 |
Words | 416 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 5, 4, 6, 11, 4, 9, 12, 6, 4 |
Lines Amount | 70 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 158 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
About this poem
This poem was published in Ingamell's collection 'Forgotten People' (1936)
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Written on 1936
Submitted by abielias1 on March 10, 2022
Modified on March 16, 2023
- 2:04 min read
- 44 Views
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"Rivers and Mountains" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/122273/rivers-and-mountains>.
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