The Silent Shearer Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFGF HBHB IHHH GBGB BFBF CJCJ FHFH FFFF BBBB IFIF HFHF BKBK| Weary and listless sad and slow | A |
| Without any conversation | B |
| Was a man that worked on The Overflow | A |
| The butt of the shed and the station | B |
| - | |
| The shearers christened him Noisy Ned | C |
| With an alias Silent Waters | D |
| But never a needless word he said | C |
| In the hut or the shearers' quarters | D |
| - | |
| Which caused annoyance to Big Barcoo | E |
| The shed's unquestioned ringer | F |
| Whose name was famous Australia through | G |
| As a dancer fighter and singer | F |
| - | |
| He was fit for the ring if he'd had his rights | H |
| As an agent of devastation | B |
| And the number of men he had killed in fights | H |
| Was his principal conversation | B |
| - | |
| I have known blokes go to their doom said he | I |
| Through actin' with haste and rashness | H |
| But the style that this Noisy Ned assumes | H |
| It's nothing but silent flashness | H |
| - | |
| We may just be dirt from his point of view | G |
| Unworthy a word in season | B |
| But I'll make him talk like a cockatoo | G |
| Or I'll get him to show the reason | B |
| - | |
| Was it chance or fate that King Condamine | B |
| A king who had turned a black tracker | F |
| Had captured a baby purcupine | B |
| Which he swapped for a fig tobacker | F |
| - | |
| With the porcupine in the Silent's bed | C |
| The shearers were quite elated | J |
| And the things to be done and the words to be said | C |
| Were anxiously awaited | J |
| - | |
| With a screech and a howl and an eldritch cry | F |
| That nearly deafened his hearers | H |
| He sprang from his bunk and his fishy eye | F |
| Looked over the laughing shearers | H |
| - | |
| He looked them over and he looked them through | F |
| As a cook might look through a larder | F |
| Now Big Barcoo I must pick on you | F |
| You're big but you'll fall the harder | F |
| - | |
| Now the silent man was but slight and thin | B |
| And of middleweight conformation | B |
| But he hung one punch on the Barcoo's chin | B |
| And it ended the altercation | B |
| - | |
| You've heard of the One round Kid said he | I |
| That hunted 'em all to shelter | F |
| The One round Finisher that was me | I |
| When I fought as the Champion Welter | F |
| - | |
| And this Barcoo bloke on his back reclines | H |
| For being a bit too clever | F |
| For snakes and wombats and porcupines | H |
| Are nothing to me whatever | F |
| - | |
| But the golden rule that I've had to learn | B |
| In the ring and for years I've tried it | K |
| Is only to talk when it comes your turn | B |
| And never to talk outside it | K |
Banjo Paterson
(1)
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