Analysis of The Stringy-Bark Tree

Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)



There's the whitebox and pine on the ridges afar,
Where the iron-bark, blue-gum, and peppermint are;
There is many another, but dearest to me,
And the king of them all was the stringy-bark tree.
Then of stringy-bark slabs were the walls of the hut,
And from stringy-bark saplings the rafters were cut;
And the roof that long sheltered my brothers and me
Was of broad sheets of bark from the stringy-bark tree.

And when sawn-timber homes were built out in the West,
Then for walls and for ceilings its wood was the best;
And for shingles and palings to last while men be,
There was nothing on earth like the stringy-bark tree.

Far up the long gullies the timber-trucks went,
Over tracks that seemed hopeless, by bark hut and tent;
And the gaunt timber-finder, who rode at his ease,
Led them on to a gully of stringy-bark trees.

Now still from the ridges, by ways that are dark,
Come the shingles and palings they call stringy-bark;
Though you ride through long gullies a twelve months you’ll see
But the old whitened stumps of the stringy-bark tree.


Scheme AABBCCBB DDBB EEFF GGBB
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 10101101001 10101110101 111001011011 001111101011 111011001101 011011001001 001111011001 111111101011 011101011001 111011011101 01100111111 111011101011 11011001011 101111011101 001101011111 111101011011 11101011111 10100111101 111111001111 10111101011
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,043
Words 188
Sentences 6
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 41
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 206
Words per stanza (avg) 47
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

56 sec read
72

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson 17 June 1867 - 2 September 1922 was an Australian writer and poet Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period more…

All Henry Lawson poems | Henry Lawson Books

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