Analysis of The Cattle-Dog's Death
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
The Plains lay bare on the homeward route,
And the march was heavy on man and brute;
For the Spirit of Drought was on all the land,
And the white heat danced on the glowing sand.
The best of our cattle-dogs lagged at last,
His strength gave out ere the plains were passed,
And our hearts grew sad when he crept and laid
His languid limbs in the nearest shade.
He saved our lives in the years gone by,
When no one dreamed of the danger nigh,
And the treacherous blacks in the darkness crept
On the silent camp where the drovers slept.
‘The dog is dying,’ a stockman said,
As he knelt and lifted the shaggy head;
‘’Tis a long day’s march ere the run be near,
‘And he’s dying fast; shall we leave him here?’
But the super cried, ‘There’s an answer there!’
As he raised a tuft of the dog’s grey hair;
And, strangely vivid, each man descried
The old spear-mark on the shaggy hide.
We laid a ‘bluey’ and coat across
The camping pack of the lightest horse,
And raised the dog to his deathbed high,
And brought him far ’neath the burning sky.
At the kindly touch of the stockmen rude
His eyes grew human with gratitude;
And though we parched in the heat that fags,
We gave him the last of the water-bags.
The super’s daughter we knew would chide
If we left the dog in the desert wide;
So we brought him far o’er the burning sand
For a parting stroke of her small white hand.
But long ere the station was seen ahead,
His pain was o’er, for the dog was dead
And the folks all knew by our looks of gloom
’Twas a comrade’s corpse that we carried home.
Scheme | AABB CCDD EEFF GGXX HHAI XXEE JJKK IIBB GGXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (67%) |
Metre | 011110101 0011101101 10101111101 0011110101 01110101111 111110101 01011111101 110100101 1110100111 111110101 00100100101 101011011 011100101 1110100101 1011110111 0110111111 1010111101 1110110111 01010111 011110101 110100101 010110101 01011111 011110101 101011011 11110110 011100111 1110110101 010101111 1110100101 1111110101 1010110111 1110101101 111110111 00111110111 101111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,560 |
Words | 303 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 132 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 88 Views
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"The Cattle-Dog's Death" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17971/the-cattle-dog%27s-death>.
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