A Ballad Of Ducks Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAACCB DEDDF E GFGGHH IJIIKKJ LFGGKKF MNMMOON KPKKQQP RSRTQQS UPUUFFP FIFFKKI VFVVWWThe railway rattled and roared and swung | A |
With jolting and bumping trucks | B |
The sun like a billiard red ball hung | A |
In the Western sky and the tireless tongue | A |
Of the wild eyed man in the corner told | C |
This terrible tale of the days of old | C |
And the party that ought to have kept the ducks | B |
- | |
Well it ain't all joy bein' on the land | D |
With an overdraft that'd knock you flat | E |
And the rabbits have pretty well took command | D |
But the hardest thing for a man to stand | D |
Is the feller who says 'Well I told you so | F |
You should ha' done this way don't you know ' | - |
I could lay a bait for a man like that | E |
- | |
The grasshoppers struck us in ninety one | G |
And what they leave well it ain't de luxe | F |
But a growlin' fault findin' son of a gun | G |
Who'd lent some money to stock our run | G |
I said they'd eaten what grass we had | H |
Says he 'Your management's very bad | H |
You had a right to have kept some ducks ' | - |
- | |
To have kept some ducks And the place was white | I |
Wherever you went you had to tread | J |
On grasshoppers guzzlin' day and night | I |
And then with a swoosh they rose in flight | I |
If you didn't look out for yourself they'd fly | K |
Like bullets into your open eye | K |
And knock it out of the back of your head | J |
- | |
There isn't a turkey or goose or swan | L |
Or a duck that quacks or a hen that clucks | F |
Can make a difference on a run | G |
When a grasshopper plague has once begun | G |
'If you'd finance us ' I says 'I'd buy | K |
Ten thousand emus and have a try | K |
The job ' I says 'is too big for ducks | F |
- | |
'You must fetch a duck when you come to stay | M |
A great big duck a Muscovy toff | N |
Ready and fit ' I says 'for the fray | M |
And if the grasshoppers come our way | M |
You turn your duck into the lucerne patch | O |
And I'd be ready to make a match | O |
That the grasshoppers eat his feathers off | N |
- | |
He came to visit us by and by | K |
And it just so happened one day in spring | P |
A kind of cloud came over the sky | K |
A wall of grasshoppers nine miles high | K |
And nine miles thick and nine hundred wide | Q |
Flyin' in regiments side by side | Q |
And eatin' up every living thing | P |
- | |
All day long like a shower of rain | R |
You'd hear 'em smackin' against the wall | S |
Tap tap tap on the window pane | R |
And they'd rise and jump at the house again | T |
Till their crippled carcasses piled outside | Q |
But what did it matter if thousands died | Q |
A million wouldn't be missed at all | S |
- | |
We were drinkin' grasshoppers so to speak | U |
Till we skimmed their carcasses off the spring | P |
And they fell so thick in the station creek | U |
They choked the waterholes all the week | U |
There was scarcely room for a trout to rise | F |
And they'd only take artificial flies | F |
They got so sick of the real thing | P |
- | |
An Arctic snowstorm was beat to rags | F |
When the hoppers rose for their morning flight | I |
With the flapping noise like a million flags | F |
And the kitchen chimney was stuffed with bags | F |
For they'd fall right into the fire and fry | K |
Till the cook sat down and began to cry | K |
And never a duck or fowl in sight | I |
- | |
We strolled across to the railroad track | V |
Under a cover beneath some trucks | F |
I sees a feather and hears a quack | V |
I stoops and I pulls the tarpaulin back | V |
Every duck in the place was there | W |
No good to them was the open air | W |
'Mister ' I says 'There's your blanky ducks ' | - |
Banjo Paterson (andrew Barton)
(1)
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