Analysis of The Old Whim Horse
Edward George Dyson 1865 (Ballarat, Victoria) – 1931 (Saint Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria)
He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly,
And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft,
With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly,
And he bears all over the brands of graft;
And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder
Why by night and day the whim is still,
Why the silence is, and the stampers' thunder
Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill.
In that whim he worked when the night winds bellowed
On the riven summit of Giant's Hand,
And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed
All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land;
And he knew his shift, and the whistle's warning,
And he knew the calls of the boys below;
Through the years, unbidden, at night or morning,
He had taken his stand by the old whim bow.
But the whim stands still, and the wheeling swallow
In the silent shaft hangs her home of clay,
And the lizards flirt and the swift snakes follow
O'er the grass-grown brace in the summer day;
And the corn springs high in the cracks and corners
Of the forge, and down where the timber lies;
And the crows are perched like a band of mourners
On the broken hut on the Hermit's Rise.
All the hands have gone, for the rich reef paid out,
And the company waits till the calls come in;
But the old grey horse, like the claim, is played out,
And no market's near for his bones and skin.
So they let him live, and they left him grazing
By the creek, and oft in the evening dim
I have seen him stand on the rises, gazing
At the ruined brace and the rotting whim.
The floods rush high in the gully under,
And the lightnings lash at the shrinking trees,
Or the cattle down from the ranges blunder
As the fires drive by on the summer breeze.
Still the feeble horse at the right hour wanders
To the lonely ring, though the whistle's dumb,
And with hanging head by the bow he ponders
Where the whim boy's gone -- why the shifts don't come.
But there comes a night when he sees lights glowing
In the roofless huts and the ravaged mill,
When he hears again all the stampers going --
Though the huts are dark and the stampers still:
When he sees the steam to the black roof clinging
As its shadows roll on the silver sands,
And he knows the voice of his driver singing,
And the knocker's clang where the braceman stands.
See the old horse take, like a creature dreaming,
On the ring once more his accustomed place;
But the moonbeams full on the ruins streaming
Show the scattered timbers and grass-grown brace.
Yet HE hears the sled in the smithy falling,
And the empty truck as it rattles back,
And the boy who stands by the anvil, calling;
And he turns and backs, and he "takes up slack".
While the old drum creaks, and the shadows shiver
As the wind sweeps by, and the hut doors close,
And the bats dip down in the shaft or quiver
In the ghostly light, round the grey horse goes;
And he feels the strain on his untouched shoulder,
Hears again the voice that was dear to him,
Sees the form he knew -- and his heart grows bolder
As he works his shift by the broken whim.
He hears in the sluices the water rushing
As the buckets drain and the doors fall back;
When the early dawn in the east is blushing,
He is limping still round the old, old track.
Now he pricks his ears, with a neigh replying
To a call unspoken, with eyes aglow,
And he sways and sinks in the circle, dying;
From the ring no more will the grey horse go.
In a gully green, where a dam lies gleaming,
And the bush creeps back on a worked-out claim,
And the sleepy crows in the sun sit dreaming
On the timbers grey and a charred hut frame,
Where the legs slant down, and the hare is squatting
In the high rank grass by the dried-up course,
Nigh a shattered drum and a king-post rotting
Are the bleaching bones of the old grey horse.
Scheme | ABABCDCD XEBEFGFX GHGHIJIJ KLKLFMFM CNCNIOIO FDFDFPFP FQFQFRFR CXCXCMCM FRFRFGFG FSFSFTFT |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 11111111110 0111100111 10111001110 0111100111 01111101110 111010111 1010100110 111110101 01111101110 1010101101 0111100111 1011110101 0111100110 0110110101 101111110 11101110111 10111001010 0010110111 00101001110 10011100101 00111001010 1010110101 00111101110 101011011 10111101111 00100110110 10111101111 0110111101 11111011110 1010100101 11111101010 1010100101 0111001010 0010110101 10101101010 10101110101 101011011010 101011011 01101101110 1011110111 11101111110 001100101 1110110110 101110011 11101101110 111110101 01101111010 00111011 10111101010 1011110101 1011101010 1010100111 1110100110 0010111101 00111101010 0110101111 1011100110 1011100111 00111001110 0010110111 01101110110 1010111111 10111011110 1111110101 1100101010 1010100111 10101001110 1110110111 11111101010 1010101101 01101001010 1011110111 00101101110 0011110111 00101001110 1010100111 10111001110 0011110111 10101001110 1010110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 3,844 |
Words | 719 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 80 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 289 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 72 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 3:38 min read
- 134 Views
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"The Old Whim Horse" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9602/the-old-whim-horse>.
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