Analysis of The Briny Grave
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
You wonder why so many would be buried in the sea,
In this world of froth and bubble,
But I don’t wonder, for it seems to me
That it saves such a lot of trouble.
And there ain’t no undertaker—
Oh! there ain’t no order that your friends can give
On the quiet to the coffin-maker—
To a gimcrack coffin-maker,
They make no differ twixt the absentee swell
And the clerk that cut from a “shortage”—
Oh! there ain’t no pauper funer-el,
And there ain’t no “impressive cortege.”
It may be a chap from the for’ard crowd,
Or a member of the British Peerage,
But they sew his nibs in a canvas shroud
Just the same as the bloke from the steerage—
As that poor bloke from the steerage.
There ain’t no need for a gravedigger there,
For you dig your own grave! Lord love yer!
And there ain’t no use for a headstone fair
When the waters close above yer!
The little headstone where they come to weep,
May be right for the land’s dry-rotters,
But you rest just as sound when you’re anchored deep
With the pigiron at your trotters—
(Our fathers had iron at their trotters).
The sea is democratic the wide world round,
And it don’t give a hang for no man,
There ain’t no Church of England burial ground,
Nor yet there ain’t no Roman.
Orthodox and het’rodox by wreck-strewn cliffs,
At peace in the stormiest weather,
Might bob up and down like two brother “stiffs,”
And rest in one shark together—
And mix up their bones together.
The bare-headed skipper is as good any day
As an authorised shifter of sin is,
And the tear of shipmate is better anyway
Than the tear of the next-of-kin is.
It saves your friends, and it fills your needs,
It is best when all is reckoned,
And she can’t come there in her widder weeds,
With her eyes on a likely second—
And a spot for the likely second.
Scheme | ABABCXCCDEDXFEFEEGCGCHAHAAIXIXJCJCC KLKLMNMNN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011101110001 01111010 1111011111 111101110 0111100 11111011111 1010101010 1011010 1111010011 001111010 11111011 011101001 111011011 1010101010 1111100101 101101101 1111101 11111011 111111111 011111011 10101011 010111111 11110111 11111111101 101111 1010110111 0110100111 011101111 11111101001 1111110 10011111 110010010 1110111101 01011010 01111010 011010111101 11110111 0011111010 101101111 111101111 11111110 0111100101 101101010 001101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,785 |
Words | 336 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 35, 9 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 680 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 166 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:40 min read
- 30 Views
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