Analysis of The Song of a Prison

Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)



Now this is the song of a prison—a song of a gaol or jug—
A ballad of quod or of chokey, the ultimate home of the mug.
The yard where the Foolish are drafted; Hell’s school where the harmless are taught;
For the big beast never is captured and the great thief never is caught.
A song of the trollop’s victim, and the dealer in doubtful eggs,
And a song of the man who was ruined by the lie with a thousand legs.
A song of suspected persons and rouge-and-vagabond pals,
And of persons beyond suspicion—the habitual criminals.

’Tis a song of the weary warders, whom prisoners call “the screws”—
A class of men who I fancy would cleave to the “Evening News.”
They look after their treasures sadly. By the screw of their keys they are known,
And they screw them many times daily before they draw their own.

It is written on paper pilfered from the prison printery,
With a stolen stump of a pencil that a felon smuggled for me.
And he’d have got twenty-four hours in the cells if he had been caught,
With bread to eat and water to drink and plenty of food for thought.

And I paid in chews of tobacco from one who is in for life;
But he is a decent fellow—he only murdered his wife.
(He is cherub-like, jolly, good-natured, and frank as the skies above,
And his Christian name is Joseph, and his other, ye gods! is Love!)

The Governor knows, and the Deputy, and all of the warders know,
Once a week, and on Sunday, we sit in a sinful row,
And bargain for chews of tobacco under the cover of prayer—
And the harmless Anglican chaplain is the only innocent there.

Staircase and doors of iron, no sign of a plank or brick,
Ceilings and floors of sandstone, and the cell walls two feet thick;
Cell like a large-sized coffin, or a small-sized tomb, and white,
And it strikes a chill to the backbone on the warmest summer night.

For fifteen hours they leave you to brood in the gloom and cold
On the cheats that you should have cheated, and the lies that you should have told;
On the money that would release you, you lent to many a friend,
And the many a generous action you suffered for in the end.

Grey daylight follows softly the heartless electric light
That printed the bars of the window on the wall of the cell all night
The darkness has vanished “hushing” when there is nothing to hush—
And I think of the old grey daylight on the teamster’s camp in the bush.

I think of the low bark homestead, the yard and the sinister bail,
And the shed in a hole in the gully—a pigsty compared with gaol;
The drought and the rows and the nagging; the hill where a flat grave is—
The gaol of my boyhood as dreadful and barren and grey as this.

We rise at six when the bell rings, and roll up our blankets neat,
Then we pace the cell till seven, brain-dulled, and with leaden feet.
Bolts clank, and the iron doors open, light floods from an iron-barred arch—
And we start with a start galvanic at the passionless, “Left—Quick march!”

Down the crooked and winding staircase in the great wrong-angular well,
Like the crooked stairs that of late years we have stumbled down to Hell;
We empty the tubs and muster, with the prison slouch and tread,
And we take to the cells our breakfast of hominy and of bread.

The church in its squat round tower, with Christ in His thorny wreath—
The reception house is below it, so the gates of Hell are beneath,
Where sinners are clad and numbered, when hope for a while has
And above us the gilded rooster that crowed when Peter lied.

What avail is the prayer of the abbess? Or the raving of Cock-eyed Liz?
The holy hermit in his cell, or the Holy Terror in his?
Brothers and sisters of Heaven, seen through the bars in a wall,
As we see the uncaught sinners—and God have mercy on all.


Scheme AABCDDXX EEFF GXCB HHII XGGG JJKK LLMM KKXX NNOX PPQQ RRSS TTXX OOUU
Poetic Form
Metre 1110110100110111 0101111101001101 01101011011101011 10111011000111011 011011000100101 001101111010110101 011010100101001 01100101000100100 1011010101100101 011111101110101 111011010101111111 011110110011111 11101101010101 10101101010101011 01111011000111111 1111010110101111 011011011111011 111010101101011 11101101100110101 0110111001101111 01001001000110101 1010111100101 010111011001011 00101001010101001 1011101110111 1001110011111 11011101011101 011011011010101 101101111100101 10111111000111111 1010110111111001 00100100101101001 1110100100101 11001101010110111 01011011111011 0111011110101001 111011101001001 0010010010010111 0100100100110111 011111100100111 1111101101110101 111011101101101 11001011011111011 011101010101111 1010010100111001 1010111111110111 110010101010101 01110110101100011 010111101101101 00101101110111101 11011010111011 001101010111101 10110110110101111 0101001110101001 100101101101001 11101100111011
Closest metre Iambic octameter
Characters 3,719
Words 703
Sentences 26
Stanzas 13
Stanza Lengths 8, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 56
Letters per line (avg) 52
Words per line (avg) 12
Letters per stanza (avg) 222
Words per stanza (avg) 54
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 13, 2023

3:31 min read
136

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson 17 June 1867 - 2 September 1922 was an Australian writer and poet Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period more…

All Henry Lawson poems | Henry Lawson Books

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