Analysis of The Shakedown on the Floor
Set me back for twenty summers—
For I’m tired of cities now—
Set my feet in red-soil furrows
And my hands upon the plough,
With the two ‘Black Brothers’ trudging
On the home stretch through the loam—
While, along the grassy siding,
Come the cattle grazing home.
And I finish ploughing early,
And I hurry home to tea—
There’s my black suit on the stretcher,
And a clean white shirt for me.
There’s a dance at Rocky Rises,
And, when all the fun is o’er,
For a certain favoured party
There’s a shake-down on the floor.
You remember Mary Carey,
Bushmen’s favourite at the Rise?
With her sweet small freckled features,
Red-gold hair, and kind grey eyes;
Sister, daughter, to her mother,
Mother, sister, to the rest—
And of all my friends and kindred,
Mary Carey loved me best.
Far too shy, because she loved me,
To be dancing oft with me;
What cared I, because she loved me,
If the world were there to see?
But we lingered by the slip rails
While the rest were riding home,
Ere the hour before the dawning,
Dimmed the great star-clustered dome.
Small brown hands that spread the mattress
While the old folk winked to see
How she’d find an extra pillow
And an extra sheet for me.
For a moment shyly smiling,
She would grant me one kiss more—
Slip away and leave me happy
By the shake-down on the floor.
Rock me hard in steerage cabins,
Rock me soft in wide saloons,
Lay me on the sand-hill lonely
Under waning western moons;
But wherever night may find me
Till I rest for evermore
I will dream that I am happy
On the shake-down on the floor.
Ah! she often watched at sunset—
For her people told me so—
Where I left her at the slip-rails
More than fifteen years ago.
And she faded like a flower,
And she died, as such girls do,
While, away in Northern Queensland,
Working hard, I never knew.
And we suffer for our sorrows,
And we suffer for our joys,
From the old bush days when mother
Spread the shake-down for the boys.
But to cool the living fever,
Comes a cold breath to my brow,
And I feel that Mary’s spirit
Is beside me, even now.
Scheme | ABABCDCDEEFEXFEG EHAHFIXI EEEEJDCD XEKECGEG XLELEGEG XKJKFMXM XNFNFBXB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111010 11101101 1110111 0110101 10111010 1011101 10101010 1010101 0110110 0110111 11111010 0011111 10111010 0110111 1010110 1011101 10101010 11101 10111010 1110111 10101010 1010101 01111010 1010111 11101111 1110111 11101111 1010111 11101011 1010101 101001010 1011101 11111010 1011111 11111010 0110111 10101010 1111111 10101110 1011101 1110110 1110101 11101110 1010101 10101111 111110 11111110 1011101 1110111 1010111 11101011 1101101 01101010 0111111 1010101 1011101 011011010 01101101 10111110 1011101 11101010 1011111 0111110 1011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,018 |
Words | 384 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 64 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 224 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 55 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:55 min read
- 86 Views
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"The Shakedown on the Floor" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18088/the-shakedown-on-the-floor>.
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