The Lay of the Motor-Car
Andrew Barton Paterson 1864 (Orange, New South Wales) – 1941 (Sydney, New South Wales)
We're away! and the wind whistles shrewd
In our whiskers and teeth;
And the granite-like grey of the road
Seems to slide underneath.
As an eagle might sweep through the sky,
So we sweep through the land;
And the pallid pedestrians fly
When they hear us at hand.
We outpace, we outlast, we outstrip!
Not the fast-fleeing hare,
Nor the racehorses under the whip,
Nor the birds of the air
Can compete with our swiftness sublime,
Our ease and our grace.
We annihilate chickens and time
And policemen and space.
Do you mind that fat grocer who crossed?
How he dropped down to pray
In the road when he saw he was lost;
How he melted away
Underneath, and there rang through the fog
His earsplitting squeal
As he went -- Is that he or a dog,
That stuff on the wheel?
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 43 sec read
- 56 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XAXABCBCDEDEFGFG HIHIXJXJ |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 766 |
Words | 144 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 8 |
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"The Lay of the Motor-Car" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/2654/the-lay-of-the-motor-car>.
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