Analysis of The Pannikin Poet

Andrew Barton Paterson 1864 (Orange, New South Wales) – 1941 (Sydney, New South Wales)



There's nothing here sublime,
But just a roving rhyme,
Run off to pass the time,
With nought titanic in.
The theme that it supports,
And, though it treats of quarts,
It's bare of golden thoughts,
It's just a pannikin.

I think it's rather hard
That each Australian bard,
Each wan, poetic card,
With thoughts galvanic in
His fiery thought alight,
In wild aerial flight,
Will sit him down and write
About a pannikin.

He makes some new-chum fare
From out his English lair
To hunt the native bear,
That curious mannikin;
And then the times get bad
That wandering English lad
Writes out a message sad
Upon his pannikin:

'O mother, think of me
Beneath the wattle tree'
(For you may bet that he
Will drag the wattle in)
'O mother, here I think
That I shall have to sink,
There ain't a single drink
The water-bottle in.'

The dingo homeward hies,
The sooty crows uprise
And caw their fierce surprise
A tone Satanic in;
And bearded bushmen tread
Around the sleeper's head,
'See here, the bloke is dead!
Now where's his pannikin?'

They read his words and weep,
And lay him down to sleep
Where wattle branches sweep,
A style mechanic in;
And, reader, that's the way
The poets of today
Spin out their little lay
About a pannikin.


Scheme aaabccxb dddbeeeB fffbgggb hhhbiiib cjjbkkkb lllbmmmB
Poetic Form
Metre 110101 110101 111101 110100 011101 011111 111101 1101 111101 110101 110101 110100 1100101 011001 111101 0101 111111 111101 110101 11001 010111 1100101 110101 0111 110111 010101 111111 110100 110111 111111 110101 010100 010101 010110 011101 010100 010101 01011 110111 1111 111101 011111 110101 010100 010101 010101 111101 0101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,176
Words 224
Sentences 8
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 48
Letters per line (avg) 20
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 157
Words per stanza (avg) 37
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:09 min read
69

Andrew Barton Paterson

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889), "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem. more…

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