A Ballad Of Ducks Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAACCBDEDDFGE HFHHII JKJJLLK MFHHLLF NONNPPO LQLLRRQ STSURRT VQVVFFQ FJFFLLJ WFWWXX| The 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 ' | G |
| I could lay a bait for a man like that | E |
| - | |
| The grasshoppers struck us in ninety one | H |
| And what they leave well it ain't de luxe | F |
| But a growlin' fault findin' son of a gun | H |
| Who'd lent some money to stock our run | H |
| I said they'd eaten what grass we had | I |
| Says he 'Your management's very bad | I |
| You had a right to have kept some ducks ' | - |
| - | |
| To have kept some ducks And the place was white | J |
| Wherever you went you had to tread | K |
| On grasshoppers guzzlin' day and night | J |
| And then with a swoosh they rose in flight | J |
| If you didn't look out for yourself they'd fly | L |
| Like bullets into your open eye | L |
| And knock it out of the back of your head | K |
| - | |
| There isn't a turkey or goose or swan | M |
| Or a duck that quacks or a hen that clucks | F |
| Can make a difference on a run | H |
| When a grasshopper plague has once begun | H |
| 'If you'd finance us ' I says 'I'd buy | L |
| Ten thousand emus and have a try | L |
| The job ' I says 'is too big for ducks | F |
| - | |
| 'You must fetch a duck when you come to stay | N |
| A great big duck a Muscovy toff | O |
| Ready and fit ' I says 'for the fray | N |
| And if the grasshoppers come our way | N |
| You turn your duck into the lucerne patch | P |
| And I'd be ready to make a match | P |
| That the grasshoppers eat his feathers off | O |
| - | |
| He came to visit us by and by | L |
| And it just so happened one day in spring | Q |
| A kind of cloud came over the sky | L |
| A wall of grasshoppers nine miles high | L |
| And nine miles thick and nine hundred wide | R |
| Flyin' in regiments side by side | R |
| And eatin' up every living thing | Q |
| - | |
| All day long like a shower of rain | S |
| You'd hear 'em smackin' against the wall | T |
| Tap tap tap on the window pane | S |
| And they'd rise and jump at the house again | U |
| Till their crippled carcasses piled outside | R |
| But what did it matter if thousands died | R |
| A million wouldn't be missed at all | T |
| - | |
| We were drinkin' grasshoppers so to speak | V |
| Till we skimmed their carcasses off the spring | Q |
| And they fell so thick in the station creek | V |
| They choked the waterholes all the week | V |
| 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 | Q |
| - | |
| An Arctic snowstorm was beat to rags | F |
| When the hoppers rose for their morning flight | J |
| 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 | L |
| Till the cook sat down and began to cry | L |
| And never a duck or fowl in sight | J |
| - | |
| We strolled across to the railroad track | W |
| Under a cover beneath some trucks | F |
| I sees a feather and hears a quack | W |
| I stoops and I pulls the tarpaulin back | W |
| Every duck in the place was there | X |
| No good to them was the open air | X |
| 'Mister ' I says 'There's your blanky ducks ' | - |
Banjo Paterson
(1)
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