Analysis of The Silent Shearer
Andrew Barton Paterson 1864 (Orange, New South Wales) – 1941 (Sydney, New South Wales)
Weary and listless, sad and slow,
Without any conversation,
Was a man that worked on The Overflow,
The butt of the shed and the station.
The shearers christened him Noisy Ned,
With an alias "Silent Waters",
But never a needless word he said
In the hut or the shearers' quarters.
Which caused annoyance to Big Barcoo,
The shed's unquestioned ringer,
Whose name was famous Australia through
As a dancer, fighter and singer.
He was fit for the ring, if he'd had his rights
As an agent of devastation;
And the number of men he had killed in fights
Was his principal conversation.
"I have known blokes go to their doom," said he,
"Through actin' with haste and rashness:
But the style that this Noisy Ned assumes,
It's nothing but silent flashness.
"We may just be dirt, from his point of view,
Unworthy a word in season;
But I'll make him talk like a cockatoo
Or I'll get him to show the reason."
Was it chance or fate, that King Condamine,
A king who had turned a black tracker,
Had captured a baby purcupine,
Which he swapped for a "fig tobacker"?
With the porcupine in the Silent's bed
The shearers were quite elated,
And the things to be done, and the words to be said,
Were anxiously awaited.
With a screech and a howl and an eldritch cry
That nearly deafened his hearers
He sprang from his bunk, and his fishy eye
Looked over the laughing shearers.
He looked them over and he looked them through
As a cook might look through a larder;
"Now, Big Barcoo, I must pick on you,
You're big, but you'll fall the harder."
Now, the silent man was but slight and thin
And of middleweight conformation,
But he hung one punch on the Barcoo's chin
And it ended the altercation.
"You've heard of the One-round Kid," said he,
"That hunted 'em all to shelter?
The One-round Finisher -- that was me,
When I fought as the Champion Welter.
"And this Barcoo bloke on his back reclines
For being a bit too clever,
For snakes and wombats and porcupines
Are nothing to me whatever.
"But the golden rule that I've had to learn
In the ring, and for years I've tried it,
Is only to talk when it comes your turn,
And never to talk outside it."
Scheme | ABAB CDCD XEFE GBGB HDXD FBFB BEBE CICI JDJD FEFE KBKB HEHE LELE MNMN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (86%) |
Metre | 10010101 0110010 101111010 011010010 01101101 111001010 110010111 00110110 11010111 0101010 111100101 101010010 11110111111 11101010 00101111101 11100010 1111111111 1101101 1011110101 1101101 1111111111 01001010 111111010 111111010 11111111 011110110 1100101 1111011 10100011 0101010 001111001111 0100010 10100101101 1101110 1111101101 1100101 1111001111 101111010 11111111 11111010 1010111101 01101 111111011 01100010 111011111 11011110 011100111 1111010010 011111101 11001110 1101010 1101110 1010111111 001011111 1101111111 01011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,126 |
Words | 398 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 14 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 56 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 117 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 12, 2023
- 2:01 min read
- 62 Views
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"The Silent Shearer" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/2703/the-silent-shearer>.
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