Analysis of The Swagman's Rest
Andrew Barton Paterson 1864 (Orange, New South Wales) – 1941 (Sydney, New South Wales)
We buried old Bob where the bloodwoods wave
At the foot of the Eaglehawk;
We fashioned a cross on the old man's grave
For fear that his ghost might walk;
We carved his name on a bloodwood tree
With the date of his sad decease
And in place of "Died from effects of spree"
We wrote "May he rest in peace".
For Bob was known on the Overland,
A regular old bush wag,
Tramping along in the dust and sand,
Humping his well-worn swag.
He would camp for days in the river-bed,
And loiter and "fish for whales".
"I'm into the swagman's yard," he said.
"And I never shall find the rails."
But he found the rails on that summer night
For a better place -- or worse,
As we watched by turns in the flickering light
With an old black gin for nurse.
The breeze came in with the scent of pine,
The river sounded clear,
When a change came on, and we saw the sign
That told us the end was near.
He spoke in a cultured voice and low --
"I fancy they've 'sent the route';
I once was an army man, you know,
Though now I'm a drunken brute;
But bury me out where the bloodwoods wave,
And, if ever you're fairly stuck,
Just take and shovel me out of the grave
And, maybe, I'll bring you luck.
"For I've always heard --" here his voice grew weak,
His strength was wellnigh sped,
He gasped and struggled and tried to speak,
Then fell in a moment -- dead.
Thus ended a wasted life and hard,
Of energies misapplied --
Old Bob was out of the "swagman's yard"
And over the Great Divide.
The drought came down on the field and flock,
And never a raindrop fell,
Though the tortured moans of the starving stock
Might soften a fiend from hell.
And we thought of the hint that the swagman gave
When he went to the Great Unseen --
We shovelled the skeleton out of the grave
To see what his hint might mean.
We dug where the cross and the grave posts were,
We shovelled away the mould,
When sudden a vein of quartz lay bare
All gleaming with yellow gold.
'Twas a reef with never a fault nor baulk
That ran from the range's crest,
And the richest mine on the Eaglehawk
Is known as "The Swagman's Rest".
Scheme | ABABCDCDEBEBFGFG HIHIJKJK LMLMABABBFBFNONO BPBPAQAQ XRXRBSBS |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111011 101101 1100110111 1111111 11111011 10111101 0011110111 1111101 11111010 0100111 100100101 11111 1111100101 0100111 10101111 01101101 1110111101 1010111 11111001001 1111111 011010111 010101 1011101101 1110111 110010101 1101101 111110111 1110101 110111011 01101101 1101011101 0101111 111111111 11111 110100111 1100101 110010101 110001 11111011 0100101 011110101 010011 1010110101 1100111 0111011011 11110101 1101001101 1111111 1110100110 110101 110011111 1101101 1011100111 111011 00101101 111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,113 |
Words | 407 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 8, 16, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 56 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 315 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 81 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:04 min read
- 125 Views
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"The Swagman's Rest" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/2712/the-swagman%27s-rest>.
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