Analysis of Gipsy Too

Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)



If they missed my face in Farmers’ Arms
When the landlord lit the lamp,
They would grin and say in their country way,
‘Oh! he’s down at the Gipsy camp!’
But they’d read of things in the Daily Mail
That the wild Australians do,
And I cared no day what the world might say,
For I came of the Gipsies too.
‘Oh! the Gipsy crowd are a mongrel lot,
‘And a thieving lot and sly!’
But I’d dined on fowls in the far-off south,
And a mongrel lot was I.
‘Oh! the Gipsy crowd are a roving gang,
‘And a sulky, silent crew!’
But they managed a smile and a word for me,
For I came of the Gipsies too.

And the old queen looked in my palm one day—
And a shrewd old dame was she:
‘My pretty young gent, you may say your say,
‘You may laugh your laugh at me;
‘But I’ll tell you the tale of your dead, dead past!’
And she told me all too true;
And she said that I’d die in a camp at last,
For I came of the Gipsies too.

And the young queen looked in my eyes that night,
In a nook where the hedge grew tall,
And the sky was swept and the stars were bright,
But her eyes had the sheen of all.
The spring was there, and the fields were fair,
And the world to my heart seemed new.
’Twas ‘A Romany lass to a Romany lad!’
But I came of the Gipsies too.

Now a Summer and Winter have gone between
And wide, wild oceans flow;
And they camp again by the sad old Thames,
Where the blackberry hedges grow.
’Twas a roving star on a land afar
That proved to a maid untrue,
But we’ll meet when they gather the Gipsy souls,
For I came of the Gipsies too.


Scheme xabaxcbCxdxdxceC bebefcfC ghghxcxc xixixcxC
Poetic Form Tetractys  (23%)
Etheree  (20%)
Metre 111110101 101101 1110101101 1111011 1111100101 1010101 0111110111 1111011 10111011 0010101 1111100111 001111 101110101 001101 11100100111 1111011 0011101111 0011111 1101111111 1111111 11110111111 0111111 01111100111 1111011 0011101111 00110111 0011100101 10110111 011100101 00111111 101001101001 1111011 10100101101 011101 0110110111 1010101 1010110101 1110101 1111110011 1111011
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,538
Words 321
Sentences 18
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 16, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 40
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 284
Words per stanza (avg) 79
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:36 min read
132

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson 17 June 1867 - 2 September 1922 was an Australian writer and poet Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period more…

All Henry Lawson poems | Henry Lawson Books

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