Analysis of The Skyline Riders
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
Against the light of a dawning white
My Skyline Riders stand—
There is trouble ahead for a dark year dead
And the selfish wrongs of a land;
There are hurrying feet of fools to repeat
The follies of Nineteen Eight,
But darkly still on each distant hill
My riders watch and wait.
My Skyline Riders are down and gone
As far as the eye can see,
And the horses stand in the shades of dawn
Where a single man holds three.
We feel the flush and we feel the thrill
Of the coming of Nineteen Nine,
For my Skyline Riders are over the hill
And into the firing line.
The skyline lifts while a storm-cloud lowers—
What’s that? A shot! All’s well!
There is news out there for this land of ours
That the tattling rifles tell.
A “thud” and a “thud” and a flash like blood!
There is light on the land at last!
Australian guns on the nearer hills
Are talking about the past.
O, a lonely place in the days gone by
Was the long first firing line,
Where we fought as strangers, you and I,
For the land that was yours and mine.
There was time to dream in the firing line,
There was time to starve and die,
When the only things in that world of mine
Were my Native Land and I.
O, a lonely place was the firing line
When the gaps were wide between—
Hundreds of miles, in this land of mine
And never a soldier seen.
The dying must die and the dead were left
Unmarked by the deadly tired—
When struck to the heart in a firing line
Where never a shot was fired.
O, a lonely place was the firing line
In the days of the dearth of men,
But hundreds and hundreds of soldiers’ sons
Have flocked to the line since then
We left it weak in the hour of pride,
When our rule seemed firmly set,
But danger threatened the firing line,
And there’s deadly danger yet.
Proud of virtue, and proud of sin,
Or proud ’neath a cruel wrong;
Proud in failure or proud to win—
Oh, the pride of man is strong!
Proud of gold or of being without
Or proud of women and wine—
But get you down from your horse of pride
And into the firing line.
Pride in poverty—all the same—
There’s work for all men to do,
With wrong to fight there is deathless fame
To win in a land so new.
Preacher and drunkard! and sportsman and bard!
In the dawning of Nineteen Nine—
Saints and sinners! ride hard! ride hard!
They are pressed in the Firing Line.
Scheme | xaxaxbcbdedecfcF ghghxixi jfjffjfj Fkfkxlfl Fmxmnofo pqpqxfnF rsrstftf |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010110101 11101 11100110111 00101101 11100111101 0101111 110111101 110101 11101101 1110111 0010100111 1010111 110101101 10101111 1111011001 0010101 011101110 010111 11111111110 101101 0100100111 11110111 010110101 1100101 1010100111 1011101 111110101 10111101 1111100101 1111101 1010101111 0110101 1010110101 1010101 101101111 0100101 0101100101 01101010 1110100101 11001110 1010110101 00110111 1100101101 1110111 1111001011 11011101 110100101 0110101 11100111 1110101 10101111 1011111 111111001 1111001 111111111 0010101 10100101 1111111 11111111 1100111 1001001001 00101111 10101111 11100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,270 |
Words | 450 |
Sentences | 25 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 64 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 252 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 64 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:15 min read
- 78 Views
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"The Skyline Riders" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18094/the-skyline-riders>.
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