Analysis of Lake Eliza
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
THE SAND was heavy on our feet,
A Christmas sky was o’er us,
And half a mile through dust and heat
Lake ’Liza lay before us.
‘You’ll have a long and heavy tramp’—
So said the last adviser—
‘You can’t do better than to camp
To-night at Lake Eliza.’
We quite forgot our aching shanks,
A cheerful spirit caught us;
We thought of green and shady banks,
We thought of pleasant waters.
’Neath sky as niggard of its rain
As of his gold the miser,
By mulga scrub and lignum plain
We’d tramp’d to Lake Eliza.
A patch to grey discoloured sand,
A fringe of tufty grasses,
A lonely pub in mulga scrub
Is all the stranger passes.
He’d pass the Lake a dozen times
And yet be none the wiser;
I hope that I shall never be
As dry as Lake Eliza.
No patch of green or water seen
To cheer the weary plodder;
The grass is tough as fencing-wire,
And just as good for fodder.
And when I see it mentioned in
Some local ADVERTISER,
’Twill make me laugh, or make me grin—
The name of ‘Lake Eliza.’
Scheme | ABABCDCE FBFXGDGE XHXHXDXE XDDDIDIE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011101101 0101111 01011101 1101011 11010101 1101010 11110111 1111010 110110101 0101011 11110101 1111010 11110111 1111010 111011 1111010 011111 011110 0101011 1101010 11010101 0111010 11111101 1111010 11111101 110101 011111010 0111110 01111100 110100 11111111 0111010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 984 |
Words | 194 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 185 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 48 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 58 sec read
- 111 Views
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"Lake Eliza" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17844/lake-eliza>.
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