Analysis of The Lean, Brown Man

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis 1876 (Auburn) – 1938 (Melbourne)



There's a big, brown man in the hinterland
Whom the nation had forgot;
He's a stolid man and a patient man
And he does not talk a lot:
And the seasons frown or the seasons smile
As he toils to sow, to reap;
And as he toils he thinks the while;
And his thoughts are long and deep.

There's a silent man in the hinterland
A land of earth-stained clowns
To the little street-bred people cooped
In the noisy seaboard towns
In the towns where many a catch-cry's raised
And devious scheme devised,
Where the talkers reign, and thoughts, like men,
Grow smug and standardised.

There's a quite man in the hinterland
Who scorns the shifts and tricks
Of the little men that talk and scheme
In the game of politics.
They have wooed him long with sly pretence
Thro' many a season past.
He was deemed a fool, and he suffered much;
But his patience ends at last.

There's a patient man in the hinterland
Who has scant time for words,
For the sounding phrase and the cries they raise
To sway the thoughtless herds.
Long has he toiled, this patient man
That the folk be fed and housed
But guile shall know no sterner foe
Than the patient man aroused.


Scheme ABCBDEDE AFXFXXXA AGXGFHXH AIXICJXJ
Poetic Form
Metre 101110010 1010101 1010100101 0111101 0010110101 1111111 01111101 0111101 101010010 011111 101011101 001011 0011100111 0100101 101010111 1101 10110010 110101 101011101 001110 11111111 1100101 1110101101 1110111 101010010 111111 1010100111 110101 11111101 1011101 11111101 1010101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,110
Words 214
Sentences 8
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 222
Words per stanza (avg) 53
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:06 min read
102

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis, better known as C. J. Dennis, was an Australian poet known for his humorous poems, especially "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke", published in the early 20th century. Though Dennis's work is less well known today, his 1915 publication of The Sentimental Bloke sold 65,000 copies in its first year, and by 1917 he was the most prosperous poet in Australian history. Together with Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson, both of whom he had collaborated with, he is often considered among Australia's three most famous poets. While attributed to Lawson by 1911, Dennis later claimed he himself was the 'laureate of the larrikin'. When he died at the age of 61, the Prime Minister of Australia Joseph Lyons suggested he was destined to be remembered as the 'Australian Robert Burns'. more…

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