Analysis of How the Land was Won
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
The future was dark and the past was dead
As they gazed on the sea once more –
But a nation was born when the immigrants said
"Good-bye!" as they stepped ashore!
In their loneliness they were parted thus
Because of the work to do,
A wild wide land to be won for us
By hearts and hands so few.
The darkest land 'neath a blue sky's dome,
And the widest waste on earth;
The strangest scenes and the least like home
In the lands of our fathers' birth;
The loneliest land in the wide world then,
And away on the furthest seas,
A land most barren of life for men –
And they won it by twos and threes!
With God, or a dog, to watch, they slept
By the camp-fires' ghastly glow,
Where the scrubs were dark as the blacks that crept
With "nulla" and spear held low;
Death was hidden amongst the trees,
And bare on the glaring sand
They fought and perished by twos and threes –
And that's how they won the land!
It was two that failed by the dry creek bed,
While one reeled on alone –
The dust of Australia's greatest dead
With the dust of the desert blown!
Gaunt cheek-bones cracking the parchment skin
That scorched in the blazing sun,
Black lips that broke in a ghastly grin –
And that's how the land was won!
Starvation and toil on the tracks they went,
And death by the lonely way;
The childbirth under the tilt or tent,
The childbirth under the dray!
The childbirth out in the desolate hut
With a half-wild gin for nurse –
That's how the first were born to bear
The brunt of the first man's curse!
They toiled and they fought through the shame of it –
Through wilderness, flood, and drought;
They worked, in the struggles of early days,
Their sons' salvation out.
The white girl-wife in the hut alone,
The men on the boundless run,
The miseries suffered, unvoiced, unknown –
And that's how the land was won.
No armchair rest for the old folk then –
But, ruined by blight and drought,
They blazed the tracks to the camps again
In the big scrubs further out.
The worn haft, wet with a father's sweat,
Gripped hard by the eldest son,
The boy's back formed to the hump of toil –
And that's how the land was won!
And beyond Up Country, beyond Out Back,
And the rainless belt, they ride,
The currency lad and the ne'er-do-well
And the black sheep, side by side;
In wheeling horizons of endless haze
That disk through the Great North-west,
They ride for ever by twos and by threes –
And that's how they win the rest.
Scheme | ababcdcd efefghgh ijijhkhk alalmnmN opopxqxq xrsrlnlN grgrxnxN xtxtsuhu |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0101100111 11110111 101011101001 1111101 0110010101 0110111 011111111 110111 010110111 0010111 010100111 001110101 01100111 00110101 011101111 01111101 111011111 10110101 1010110111 110111 11100101 0110101 110101101 0111101 1111110111 111101 011010101 10110101 111100101 1100101 111100101 0110111 0100110111 0110101 01100111 011001 011001001 1011111 11010111 0110111 1101110111 1100101 1100101101 110101 011100101 0110101 010010101 0110111 11110111 1101101 110110101 0011101 011110101 1110101 011110111 0110111 0011100111 001111 0100100111 0011111 0100101101 1110111 1111011011 0111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,432 |
Words | 462 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 64 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 232 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 57 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:22 min read
- 137 Views
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"How the Land was Won" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 16 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17817/how-the-land-was-won>.
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