Analysis of Hopeful Hawkins



Hawkins wasn't in the swim at all in Dingo Flat,
And to bait him was our chiefest form of bliss;
But, in justice, be it said that he had a business head.
(That's why I'm standing here and telling this.)

He was trav'ling for a company, insuring people's lives;
And stayed about a month in Dingo Flat;
But his biz was rather dull, and we took him for a gull,
An amazing simple-minded one at that.

He was mad, he was, on mining and around about the town
Prospected every reef.  But worse than that
He'd talk for half a day, in a most annoying way,
On 'The mineral resources of the Flat.'

He swore that somewhere nigh us was a rich gold-bearing red,
If a fellow only had the luck to strike it;
And he only used to laugh when the boys began to chaff,
And seemed, in fact, to rather sort of like it.

Well, we stood him for a month until he well nigh drove us mad.
And as jeering couldn't penetrate his hide
We fixed a little scheme for to dissipate his dream,
And sicken him of mining till he died.

We got a likely-looking bit of quartz and faked it up
With dabs of golden paint; then called him in.
Oh, he went clean off his head; it was gold for sure, he said.
And if we'd sell our claim he'd raise the tin.

But we weren't taking any-not at least till later on;
For we reckoned that we'd string him on a while.
When he wanted information of the reef's exact location
We would meet him with a knowing sort of smile.

At last we dropped a hint that set him pegging out a claim,
And we saw that we were coming in for sport;
For the next account we heard was when Hawkins passed the word
He was fetching up an expert to report.

When we heard that expert's verdict we were blown clean out of time,
And absorbed the fact that we had fallen in.
The gold, he said, would run 'bout four ounces to the ton;
With traces, too, of copper, zinc and tin.

Old Hawkins he was jubilant, and up at Peter's store
A lovely lot of specimens was showing;
And we gazed at them and groaned, for the truth had to be owned:
We had put him on a pile without our knowing.

We couldn't let the thing slip through our fingers, so to speak.
There were thousands in the mine without a doubt.
So me and Baker Brothers, and half a dozen others,
We formed a syndicate to buy him out.

Well, he said he'd not the money to develop such a claim,
And he'd sell it if we made a decent bid.
So we made pretence at dealing, and it almost seemed like stealing
When he parted, for five hundred lovely quid.

We haven't seen the vendor in the Flat for nigh a week,
And we're wishing, on the whole, he'd never come.
The confounded mine's a duffer; for that simple-minded buffer
He had salted it.  The 'expert' was a chum.

Hawkins wasn't reckoned much at all in Dingo Flat.
We'd a notion that his headpiece was amiss.
But we wish to have it stated, he was rather underrated.
(That's why I'm standing here and telling this.)


Scheme abcB xaxa xaxa cdxd xexe xfcf xghg ijxj xfhf xkxk lmxm inkn loxo abnB
Poetic Form
Metre 1010001110101 01111101111 10101111110101 1111010101 11110100010101 0101010101 11111010111101 10101010111 111111100010101 110011111 1111010010101 10100100101 1111111011101 101010101111 01101111010111 01011101111 111110101111111 0110101011 110101111011 0101110111 11010101110111 1111011110 11111111111111 01111011101 111010101111101 11101111101 111001010101010 11111010111 11110111110101 01111010011 10101111110101 11101110101 111110101011111 00101111100 0111111110101 1101110101 11011100011101 01011100110 01111011011111 1111101011010 110101111010111 10100010101 11010100101010 1101001111 111110101010101 01111110101 11111100111110 11101110101 11010100011101 01101011101 0010101011101010 11101010101 1010101110101 1010111101 1111111011100010 1111010101
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 2,821
Words 565
Sentences 30
Stanzas 14
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 56
Letters per line (avg) 39
Words per line (avg) 10
Letters per stanza (avg) 156
Words per stanza (avg) 40
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

2:56 min read
81

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

 · 1876 · Auburn
 · 1938 · Melbourne

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis, better known as C. J. Dennis, was an Australian poet known for his humorous poems, especially "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke", published in the early 20th century. Though Dennis's work is less well known today, his 1915 publication of The Sentimental Bloke sold 65,000 copies in its first year, and by 1917 he was the most prosperous poet in Australian history. Together with Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson, both of whom he had collaborated with, he is often considered among Australia's three most famous poets. While attributed to Lawson by 1911, Dennis later claimed he himself was the 'laureate of the larrikin'. When he died at the age of 61, the Prime Minister of Australia Joseph Lyons suggested he was destined to be remembered as the 'Australian Robert Burns'. more…

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