Analysis of And the Bairns Will Come
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
So you’ve seen at last what we have seen so long through scalding tears:
You have found what we—the People—we have known for twenty years:
And Australia’s hymn is swelling till the furthest fence-wires hum—
Save your country, Legislators—and the bairns will come.
You would put the blame upon us—we are women, we are men;
And our fathers and our mothers gave the country nine and ten.
They had honest work and wages, and the ways to win a home—
Give us half the chances they had—and the bairns will come.
Try the ranks of wealth and fashion, ask the rich and well-to-do,
With their nurseries and their nurses and their children one and two,
Will they help us bear the burden?—but their purse-proud lips are dumb.
Let us earn a decent living—and the bairns will come.
Young men, helpless in the city’s wheel of greed that never stops,
Tramp the streets for work while sweethearts slave in factories and shops.
Shall they marry and bear children to their parents’ martyrdom?
Make the city what it should be—and the bairns will come.
Shall we give you sons and daughters to a life of never-rest,
Sacrificing all for nothing in the desert of the West,
To be driven to the city’s squalid suburb and the slum?
Make the city what it should be—and the bairns will come.
Don’t you hear Australia calling for her children unconceived?
Don’t you hear them calling to her while her heart is very grieved?
Give the best land to the farmers, make the barren West a home,
Save the rainfall, lock the rivers—and the bairns will come.
Scheme | xxaabbca ddaa eeaA ffaA dxca |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111111111111101 111110101111101 01111010101101 111010000111 111010111110111 01010010101010101 111010100011101 1110101100111 101110101010111 1110001100110101 111110101111111 1110101000111 11100011111101 10111111010001 111001101110100 1010111100111 111110101011101 10011100010101 11101011010001 1010111100111 1110101010101 111110101011101 101110101010101 101101000111 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 1,545 |
Words | 274 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 50 |
Words per line (avg) | 11 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 239 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 54 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:22 min read
- 48 Views
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