Analysis of A May Night on the Mountains
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
’Tis a wonderful time when these hours begin,
These long ‘small hours’ of night,
When grass is crisp, and the air is thin,
And the stars come close and bright.
The moon hangs caught in a silvery veil,
From clouds of a steely grey,
And the hard, cold blue of the sky grows pale
In the wonderful Milky Way.
There is something wrong with this star of ours,
A mortal plank unsound,
That cannot be charged to the mighty powers
Who guide the stars around.
Though man is higher than bird or beast,
Though wisdom is still his boast,
He surely resembles Nature least,
And the things that vex her most.
Oh, say, some muse of a larger star,
Some muse of the Universe,
If they who people those planets far
Are better than we, or worse?
Are they exempted from deaths and births,
And have they greater powers,
And greater heavens, and greater earths,
And greater Gods than ours?
Are our lies theirs, and our truth their truth,
Are they cursed for pleasure’s sake,
Do they make their hells in their reckless youth
Ere they know what hells they make?
And do they toil through each weary hour
Till the tedious day is o’er,
For food that gives but the fleeting power
To toil and strive for more?
Scheme | ABABCDCDEFEFGHGH IJIJKEKE LMLMNDNX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101001111001 1111011 111100111 0011101 0111001001 1110101 0011110111 00100101 11101111110 010101 11011101010 110101 111101111 1101111 110010101 0011101 111110101 111010 111101101 1101111 110101101 0111010 010100101 0101110 11011010111 1111101 1111101101 1111111 0111111010 10100111 1111101010 110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,167 |
Words | 221 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 307 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 73 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 134 Views
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"A May Night on the Mountains" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17708/a-may-night-on-the-mountains>.
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