Analysis of Fire

Dorothea Mackeller 1885 (Point Piper, Sydney) – 1968 (Randwick)



This life that we call our own
Is neither strong nor free;
A flame in the wind of death,
It trembles ceaselessly.

And this all we can do
To use our little light
Before, in the piercing wind,
It flickers into night:

To yield the heat of the flame,
To grudge not, but to give
Whatever we have of strength,
That one more flame may live.


Scheme XAXA XBXB XXXX
Poetic Form Quatrain  (67%)
Metre 11111101 110111 0100111 11100 011111 1110101 0100101 110011 1101101 111111 101111 111111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 332
Words 68
Sentences 3
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 86
Words per stanza (avg) 22
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 09, 2023

20 sec read
250

Dorothea Mackeller

Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar (better known as Dorothea Mackellar), OBE was an Australian poet and fiction writer. Her poem My Country is widely known in Australia, especially its second stanza, which begins: "I love a sunburnt country/A land of sweeping plains,/Of ragged mountain ranges,/Of droughts and flooding rains." more…

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