Analysis of A Slight Misunderstanding at the Jasper Gate
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
Oh, do you hear the argument, far up above the skies?
The voice of old Saint Peter, in expostulation rise?
Growing shrill, and ever shriller, at the thing that’s being done;
More in sorrow than in anger, like our old Jack Robertson.
Old Saint Peter’s had his troubles—heaps of troubles, great and small,
Since he kept the gates of Heaven—but this last one covers all!
It is not a crowing rooster—that’s a sight and sound he’s useter,
Simulated by some impish spirit that he knows full well;
It is simply Drake, of Devon, who is breaking out of Heaven,
With a crew of pirate brethren, to come down once more to Hell!
Oh, do you hear the distant sound, that seems to come and go,
As thunder does in summer time, when faraway and low?
Or the “croon” beneath the church bells, when they’re pealing from the tower—
And the church bells are the battle-call in this dark, anxious hour.
Do you feel the distant throbbing; Do you feel it go and come;
Like a war hymn on horizons, or a centuries-mellowed drum!
Hear it sobbing, hear it throbbing, like some not unhappy sobbing—
By the peaceful Devon landscape and the fair Devonian home!
By the land those spirits meet in—and it’s Drake’s Drum, spirit-beaten,
By perhaps the Rose of Torridge—and it’s calling Drake to come?
Oh, do you feel a cooling hand upon your fevered brow?
That dulls your ears to Hell’s Own Din—or that worse Silence, now?
In the starlight in the Channel, while Destruction lurks below,
Or that Nether-Hell, the Stoke-hole, where you cannot see or know?
Do you feel a soothing presence, keeping sanity in one
Going mad, in Satan’s Nightmare, where the gun-crew works the gun?
It is Raleigh!—Admiral-Poet, who had dreams though few may know it—
Who had dreams of England’s greatness, otherwise than by the sea.
Sorrowful but all-forgiving, bringing courage to the living—
Raleigh’s Spirit, not from London, but his Vanished Colony.
Oh, do you feel a stony calm that you had never known?
With comrades in the firing-line, or “Sentry Go” alone.
When it’s Hellfire all around you, and it’s freezing slush below,
Or you pace in rain and darkness, with Old Death, and “Sentry Go”—
Feel a cold determination that makes all but Now a blank;
That’s half foreign to your nature, and half foreign to your rank?
It is Wellington, where French is, who has broken Heaven’s trenches,
With his purple-blooded captains (who used purple language then)
Come to strengthen with his spirit all the coolness you inherit—
He who took the scum of Europe, and who trained them to be Men.
Scheme | AABBCCDEBEFFDDGGHXBG DXFFBBXIHI JJFFKKXLXL |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110100110101 0111110011 10101011011101 1010101011011100 111011101110101 111011101111101 111010101010111 10011101011111 1110111011101110 101110101111111 11110101111101 11010101110101 101010111111010 0011101010111010 111010101111101 1011101010100101 1110111011101010 101010100101001 1011101001111010 10101110110111 11110101011101 11111111111101 00100101010101 111010111110111 111010101010001 1010111011101 11101001011111111 11111010101101 1001101010101010 11011101110100 11110101111101 1100101110101 11110110110101 111010101110101 10100101111101 111011100110111 1110011111101010 111010101110101 1110111010101010 111011100111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 2,567 |
Words | 446 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 20, 10, 10 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 49 |
Words per line (avg) | 11 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 654 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 148 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 2:13 min read
- 144 Views
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"A Slight Misunderstanding at the Jasper Gate" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17712/a-slight-misunderstanding-at-the-jasper-gate>.
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