Analysis of The Mallee Fire
Charles Henry Souter 1864 – 1944
I SUPPOSE it just depends on where you’re raised,
Once I met a cove as swore by green belar!
Couldn’t sight the good old mallee-stump I praised;
Well!—I couldn’t sight belar, and there you are!
But the faces in the fire where the mallee stump’s a-blinking
Are the friendliest I ever seen, to my way o’ thinking!
In the city where the fires is mostly coal—
There! I can’t a-bear to go and warm my feet!
Spitting, fizzing things as hasn’t got no soul!
Things as puffs out yaller smoke instead of heat!
But at home—well, it is home when the mallee-stump’s a-burning,
And the evenin’s drawing chilly and the season is a-turning.
And there’s some as runs ’em down because they’re tough.
Well? And what’s the good of anythink as ain’t?
No. It’s nary use to serve ’em any bluff,
For they’d use up all the patience of a saint.
But they’ll split as sweet as sugar if you know the way to take ’em;
If you don’t, there isn’t nothink in the world as’ll make ’em.
They’re tremenjus hard to kindle, tho’, at first:
Like the friendship of the kind that comes to stay.
You can blow and blow and blow until you burst,
And when they won’t, they won’t burn, anyway!
But when once they gets a start, tho’ they make no showy flashes,
Well, they’ll serve you true and honest to the last pinch of ashes
Scheme | ABABCC DEDECC FAFXGG HIHIXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111011111 1110111111 110111111 111110111 101000101011010 101001101111110 001010101101 11101110111 101111111 1111110111 11111111011010 001101000101010 01111110111 100011111 11101111101 11111010101 1111111011101111 111111001111 111110111 10101011111 11101010111 011111110 111110111111010 111110101011110 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,444 |
Words | 243 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 40 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 242 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 60 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 116 Views
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"The Mallee Fire" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/5229/the-mallee-fire>.
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