Analysis of The Song of the Darling River
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
The skies are brass and the plains are bare,
Death and ruin are everywhere --
And all that is left of the last year's flood
Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud;
The salt-springs bubble and the quagmires quiver,
And -- this is the dirge of the Darling River:
`I rise in the drought from the Queensland rain,
`I fill my branches again and again;
`I hold my billabongs back in vain,
`For my life and my peoples the South Seas drain;
`And the land grows old and the people never
`Will see the worth of the Darling River.
`I drown dry gullies and lave bare hills,
`I turn drought-ruts into rippling rills --
`I form fair island and glades all green
`Till every bend is a sylvan scene.
`I have watered the barren land ten leagues wide!
`But in vain I have tried, ah! in vain I have tried
`To show the sign of the Great All Giver,
`The Word to a people: O! lock your river.
`I want no blistering barge aground,
`But racing steamers the seasons round;
`I want fair homes on my lonely ways,
`A people's love and a people's praise --
`And rosy children to dive and swim --
`And fair girls' feet in my rippling brim;
`And cool, green forests and gardens ever' --
Oh, this is the hymn of the Darling River.
The sky is brass and the scrub-lands glare,
Death and ruin are everywhere;
Thrown high to bleach, or deep in the mud
The bones lie buried by last year's flood,
And the Demons dance from the Never Never
To laugh at the rise of the Darling River.
Scheme | aAbbcc dxddcc eeffggcc hhiijjcc aAbbcc |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011100111 1010110 0111110111 1010110111 0111000110 01101101010 110011011 1111001001 1111101 11101100111 00111001010 1101101010 111100111 1111011001 111100111 1100110101 11100101111 101111101111 1101101110 01101011110 111100101 110100101 111111101 010100101 010101101 0111011001 0111001010 11101101010 011100111 1010110 111111001 011101111 00101101010 11101101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,452 |
Words | 279 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 8, 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 34 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 223 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 55 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 16, 2023
- 1:24 min read
- 178 Views
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"The Song of the Darling River" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18102/the-song-of-the-darling-river>.
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