Analysis of The Cockney Soul
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
From Woolwich and Brentford and Stamford Hill, from Richmond into the Strand,
Oh, the Cockney soul is a silent soul – as it is in every land!
But out on the sand with a broken band it's sarcasm spurs them through;
And, with never a laugh, in a gale and a half, 'tis the Cockney cheers the crew.
Oh, send them a tune from the music-halls with a chorus to shake the sky!
Oh, give them a deep-sea chanty now – and a star to steer them by!
Now this is a song of the great untrained, a song of the Unprepared,
Who had never the brains to plead unfit, or think of the things they dared;
Of the grocer-souled and the draper-souled, and the clerks of the four o'clock,
Who stood for London and died for home in the nineteen-fourteen shock.
Oh, this is a pork-shop warrior's chant – come back from it, maimed and blind,
To a little old counter in Grey's Inn-road and a tiny parlour behind;
And the bedroom above, where the wife and he go silently mourning yet
For a son-in-law who shall never come back and a dead son's room "To Let".
(But they have a boy "in the fried-fish line" in a shop across the "wye",
Who will take them "aht" and "abaht" to-night and cheer their old eyes dry.)
And this is a song of the draper's clerk (what have you all to say?) –
He'd a tall top-hat and a walking-coat in the city every day –
He wears no flesh on his broken bones that lie in the shell-churned loam;
For he went over the top and struck with his cheating yard-wand – home.
(Oh, touch your hat to the tailor-made before you are aware,
And lilt us a lay of Bank-holiday and the lights of Leicester-square!)
Hats off to the dowager lady at home in her house in Russell-square!
Like the pork-shop back and the Brixton flat, they are silently mourning there;
For one lay out ahead of the rest in the slush 'neath a darkening sky,
With the blood of a hundred earls congealed and his eye-glass to his eye.
(He gave me a cheque in an envelope on a distant gloomy day;
He gave me his hand at the mansion door and he said: "Good-luck! Good-bai!")
Scheme | AABB CC DDEE FFGG CC HHII JJ JJCC HX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110101011100101 101011010111101001 1110110101110111 0110010010011010101 111011010110101101 111011110011111 1110110101011001 11100111011110111 101010010100110101 1111001110011111 111011111111101 1010110011100101001 00101101011100101 101011110110011111 11101001110010101 111110111011111 011011011111111 101110010100101001 1111111011100111 1111001011110111 111110101011101 0110111100011101 111010010110010101 10111001111100101 111101101001101001 10110101010111111 1110101101010101 11111101010111111 |
Characters | 2,040 |
Words | 395 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 2, 4, 4, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 55 |
Words per line (avg) | 14 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 170 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 43 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 2:00 min read
- 89 Views
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"The Cockney Soul" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17975/the-cockney-soul>.
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