Analysis of The Brass Well
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
'Tis a legend of the bushmen from the days of Cunningham,
When he opened up the country and the early squatters came.
Tis the old tale of a fortune missed by men who did seek,
And, perhaps, you haven’t heard it—The Brass Well on Myall Creek.
They were north of running rivers, they were south of Queensland rains,
And a blazing drought was scorching every grass-blade from the plains;
So the stockmen drove the cattle to the range where there was grass,
And a couple sunk a well and found what they believed was brass.
‘Here’s some bloomin’ brass!’ they muttered when they found it in the clay,
And they thought no more about it and in time they went away;
But they heard of gold, and saw it, somewhere down by Inverell,
And they felt and weighed it, crying: ‘Why! we found it in the well!’
And they worked about the station and at times they took the track,
Always meaning to save money, always meaning to go back—
‘Always meanin’,’ like the bushmen, who go drifting round like wrecks,
And they’d get half way to Myall, strike a pub and blew their cheques.
Then they told two more about it and those other two grew old,
And they never found the brass well and they never found the gold.
For the scrub grows dense and quickly and, though many went to seek,
No one ever struck the lost track to the Well on Myall Creek.
And the story is forgotten and I’m sitting here, alas!
With a woeful load of trouble and a woeful lack of brass;
But I dream at times that I might find what many went to seek,
And my luck might lead my footsteps to the Well at Myall Creek.
Scheme | XXAABBCC DDDX EEXB FFAA CCAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10101010101110 111010100010101 10111010111111 0011111011111 10111010101111 0010111010011101 10110101011111 001010101110111 11111101111001 011110110011101 111110111111 011011101111001 011010100111101 1101110110111 1110101110111 01111111010111 111110110110111 011010110110101 101110100110111 11101011101111 001010100110101 101011100010111 111111111110111 0111111101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 1,576 |
Words | 301 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 50 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 242 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 59 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 42 Views
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