Analysis of Commandeering
Andrew Barton Paterson 1864 (Orange, New South Wales) – 1941 (Sydney, New South Wales)
Our hero was a Tommy with a conscience free from care,
And such an open countenance that when he breathed the air
He mopped up all the atmosphere -- so little went to spare
You could hardly say he breathed, he "commandeered" it.
For nowadays you'll notice when a man is "on the make",
And other people's property is anxious for to take,
We never use such words as "steal", or "collar", "pinch", or "shake".
No, the fashion is to say we "commandeered" it.
And our simple-minded hero used to grumble at his lot,
Said he, "This commandeerin's just a little bit too hot,
A fellow has to carry every blooming thing he's got;
Whatever he puts down they'll commandeer it."
So after much anxiety our simple-minded elf
He thought he'd do a little commandeering for himself,
And the first thing that he'd noticed was a bottle on a shelf
In a cottage, so he thought he'd commandeer it.
"What ho!" says he, "a bottle, and, by George, it's full of beer,
And no commanding officer to come and interfere.
Here's my own blooming health," says he, "I'm on the commandeer."
And without another word he commandeered it.
On his subsequent proceedings we must draw a little veil,
For the Boers had left some sheep dip in that bottle labelled "Ale";
But the doctor said he's shift it -- if all other methods fail,
We must use the stomach pump and commandeer it.
Scheme | AAABCCCB DDDB EEEB FFFB GGGB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101010101010111 01110100111101 1111010110111 11101111011 1101101011101 01010100110111 11011111110111 10101111011 0101010101110111 11111010111 010111010010111 101111011 110101001010101 11110101101 001111101010101 00101111011 11110100111111 0101010011001 1111011111001 00101011011 111000101110101 101111110110101 101011111110101 11101010011 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,347 |
Words | 249 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 43 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 204 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:17 min read
- 85 Views
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"Commandeering" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/2512/commandeering>.
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