Analysis of The King of our Republic
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
He is coming! He is coming! without heralds, without cheers.
He is coming! He is coming! and he’s been with us for years:
And, if you should pause to wonder who’s the man of whom I sing—
’Tis the King of our Republic, and the man we shall call King.
No, he comes not to amuse us, and he comes not to explain,
With the bathos of the old things over all the land again.
The debatable and tangled, and the vain imagining
Shall be swept out of our pathway by the man that we’ll call King.
He is coming! He is coming! He has heard our spirit call;
He’ll be greatest man since Cromwell in the English nations all,
And he’ll take his place amongst us while the rest are wondering—
Shall the King of our Republic, and the man we will call King.
If you find him stern, unyielding, where his living task is set,
I have told you that a tyrant shall uplift the nation yet;
He will place his country’s welfare over all and everything,
Shall the King of our Republic, and the man that we’ll call King.
Yet his heart shall still be gentle with his brothers gone astray,
For the Great Man of Australia shall be simple in his day—
Modest, kindly, but unyielding, while the watching world shall ring
With the name of our Republic and the man that we call King.
| Scheme | AABBXXBB CCBB DDBB EEBB |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | |
| Metre | 111011100110011 111011100111111 011111101011111 1011100100011111 111110110111101 10110111010101 001000100010100 111111011011111 1110111011110101 111011100010101 011110111011100 1011100100011111 111110101110111 111110101100101 111111101010 1011100100011111 111111101110101 101110101110011 101010101010111 1011100100011111 |
| Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
| Characters | 1,257 |
| Words | 241 |
| Sentences | 14 |
| Stanzas | 4 |
| Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4, 4 |
| Lines Amount | 20 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 48 |
| Words per line (avg) | 12 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 240 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 60 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 92 Views
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"The King of our Republic" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18022/the-king-of-our-republic>.
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