Analysis of It's Grand
Andrew Barton Paterson 1864 (Orange, New South Wales) – 1941 (Sydney, New South Wales)
It's grand to be a squatter
And sit upon a post,
And watch your little ewes and lambs
A-giving up the ghost.
It's grand to be a "cockie"
With wife and kids to keep,
And find an all-wise Providence
Has mustered all your sheep.
It's grand to be a Western man,
With shovel in your hand,
To dig your little homestead out
From underneath the sand.
It's grand to be a shearer
Along the Darling-side,
And pluck the wool from stinking sheep
That some days since have died.
It's grand to be a rabbit
And breed till all is blue,
And then to die in heaps because
There's nothing left to chew.
It's grand to be a Minister
And travel like a swell,
And tell the Central District folk
To go to -- Inverell.
It's grand to be a socialist
And lead the bold array
That marches to prosperity
At seven bob a day.
It's grand to be unemployed
And lie in the Domain,
And wake up every second day --
And go to sleep again.
It's grand to borrow English tin
To pay for wharves and docks
And then to find it isn't in
The little money-box.
It's grand to be a democrat
And toady to the mob,
For fear that if you told the truth
They'd hunt you from your job.
It's grand to be a lot of things
In this fair Southern land,
But if the Lord would send us rain,
That would, indeed, be grand!
Scheme | ABXB CDXD XEXE AFDF XGXG AXCG XHXHXIHX JKJK XLXL XEIE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111010 010101 01110101 010101 111101 110111 01111100 110111 11110101 110011 1111011 10101 1111010 010101 01011101 111111 1111010 011111 01110101 110111 11110100 010101 01010101 1111 11110100 010101 11010100 110101 111101 010001 011100101 011101 1111101 111101 01111100 010101 1111010 01101 11111101 111111 11110111 011101 11011111 110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,262 |
Words | 251 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 8, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 96 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:19 min read
- 41 Views
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"It's Grand" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/2541/it%27s-grand>.
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