Analysis of Old Town Types No.1 - The Old Town
Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis 1876 (Auburn) – 1938 (Melbourne)
Fierce on the wheat-sown Mallee plain
The ruthless summer suns burned down,
And dust-storms, heralding the rain,
Swept thro' the street and on again
While tradesfolk cursed in the old white town.
Of sand and line-stone stoutly built,
She'd lived to prosper and to wilt,
Because, as all wiseacres knew,
'They went and brought the railway thro'.'
Deep-voiced, bewhiskered townsfolk these,
Remnant of pioneering days,
Full of high tales and memories
Of wild, rough work and wilder sprees,
When coach and teamster went their ways;
When men pushed out to newer land
And cash came easy to the hand
And went: The golden days men knew
'Before that put that railway thro'.'
Yet even in those days of stress -
Or seeming stress - the old town knew
Nothing of wnat or wretchedness;
For wealth was there and work to bless
All men who sought them work to do.
To me, a child in those far years,
Now as a time-dimmed dream appears
The olden life that once I knew
After the railway wandered thro'.
Like myths in some long-fabled tale -
Figures and scenes to conjure with
They seem. Yet 'spite the deepening veil,
Their memories grow never stales;
Big George, the lumper; Toll, the smith;
Long John, the snob - long have they slept
While suns burned down and dustorm swept
Across the Mallee plains they knew
Before men brought the railway thro'.
Scheme | ABAXBCCDE FGFFGHHDE IDFIDJJDE KXKFXLLDE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101111 01010111 01110001 11010101 11100111 11011101 11110011 011111 1101011 11111 1010101 11110100 11110101 11010111 11111101 01110101 01010111 0111111 11001111 11010111 101111 11110111 11111111 11010111 11011101 01011111 1001101 11011101 10011101 111101001 11001101 11010101 11011111 1111011 0101111 0111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,305 |
Words | 239 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 9, 9 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 261 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 59 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:11 min read
- 85 Views
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"Old Town Types No.1 - The Old Town" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/6498/old-town-types-no.1---the-old-town>.
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