Analysis of Australian Bards And Bush Reviewers
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part --
You're a clever southern writer, scarce inferior to Bret Harte.
If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks,
And discover shining rivers where there's only mud and sticks;
If you picture `mighty forests' where the mulga spoils the view --
You're superior to Kendall, and ahead of Gordon too.
If you swear there's not a country like the land that gave you birth,
And its sons are just the noblest and most glorious chaps on earth;
If in every girl a Venus your poetic eye discerns,
You are gracefully referred to as the `young Australian Burns'.
But if you should find that bushmen -- spite of all the poets say --
Are just common brother-sinners, and you're quite as good as they --
You're a drunkard, and a liar, and a cynic, and a sneak,
Your grammar's simply awful and your intellect is weak.
Scheme | AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 111110101101 010000111110101 111001001011 1010101010100111 111110101011111 001010101110101 1110110101101 101001100011101 111110101011111 0111101001100111 1010010101010101 111000111010101 111111101110101 111010100111111 101000100010001 111010011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 1,011 |
Words | 183 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 49 |
Words per line (avg) | 11 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 195 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 57 sec read
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"Australian Bards And Bush Reviewers" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17737/australian-bards-and-bush-reviewers>.
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