Cleaning Up Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCC DDEECC FGHHCC IIJJCC KKLLCC EEAACC| When the horse has been unharnessed and we've flushed the old machine | A |
| And the water o'er the sluice is running evenly and clean | A |
| When there's thirty load before us and the sun is high and bright | B |
| And we've worked from early morning and shall have to work till night | B |
| Not a man of us is weary though the graft is pretty rough | C |
| If we see the proper colour showing freely through the stuff | C |
| - | |
| With a dandy head of water and a youngster at the rear | D |
| To hand along the billy boys and keep the tail race clear | D |
| We lift the wash and flash the fork and make the gravel fly | E |
| The shovelling is heavy and we're soaked from heel to thigh | E |
| But it makes a fellow tireless and his thews and sinews tough | C |
| If the colour's showing freely as he gaily shifts the stuff | C |
| - | |
| When Geordie Best is pumping to a rollicking refrain | F |
| And Sandy wipes his streaming brow and shakes the fork again | G |
| The pebbles dance and rattle and the water seems to laugh | H |
| Good luck is half the battle and good will's the other half | H |
| And no day's too long and trying and no toil is hard enough | C |
| When we see the colour showing in each shovelful of stuff | C |
| - | |
| Can the mining speculator with a pile of golden scrip | I |
| Or the plunger who has laid his all upon a winning tip | I |
| Or the city man who's hit upon a profitable deal | J |
| Know the wonderful elation that the lucky diggers feel | J |
| When Fortune's smiled but grimly and the storeman's looking gruff | C |
| And at last they see the colour showing freely in the stuff | C |
| - | |
| Never mates It is a feeling that no other winner knows | K |
| Not the soldier marching homeward from the conquest of his foes | K |
| Nor the scholar who's successful in his searching of the skies | L |
| Nor the squalid miser grovelling where his secret treasure lies | L |
| 'Tis a keener wilder rapture in the digger bold and bluff | C |
| Who feeds the sluice and sees the colour shining in the stuff | C |
| - | |
| Then lift the wash and flash the fork and make the gravel fly | E |
| We can laugh at all the pleasures on which other men rely | E |
| When the water o'er the sluice is running evenly and clean | A |
| And the loaded ripples glitter with a lively golden sheen | A |
| No day's too long and trying and no toil is hard enough | C |
| When we wash her down and see the colour freely through the stuff | C |
Edward Dyson
(6)
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