The Trucker Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFE GHGH IJIJ KLKL MMMM NONO PQPQ RSRS MMMM TQTQ UFUFIf you want a game to tame you and to take your measure in | A |
Try a week or two of trucking in a mine | B |
Where the rails are never level for a half a minute's spin | A |
And the curves are short and sharp along the line | B |
- | |
Try the feverish bottom level down five hundred feet of shaft | C |
Where the atmosphere is like a second suit | D |
When the wash is full of water and you've got to run the graft | C |
For there's forty ton of gravel in the shoot | D |
- | |
'Want a job o' truckin' dost tha ' says the boss old Geordie Rist | E |
Shift's a trucker short ma lad but aw don' know | F |
Can'st tha do th' work though think'st tha Art a pretty decent fist | E |
Eh well damme thoo can try it go below ' | - |
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So the cage is manned the knocker clangs and clatters on the brace | G |
The engine draws a deep defiant breath | H |
To inflate her lungs of iron and in silence face to face | G |
We drop into the darkness deep as death | H |
- | |
Then a fairy sense of lightness and of floating on the night | I |
A sudden glare and Number Three is passed | J |
Soon a sound of warring waters and another rush of light | I |
'All clear ' The up trip never seems so fast | J |
- | |
It is rough upon the tyro that first tussle with the trucks | K |
The wretched four with worn three cornered wheels | L |
That are sure to fall to his lot and to floor him if his pluck's | K |
Not true when mates are grinding at his heels | L |
- | |
Then the struggle at the incline and the deuced ticklish squeeze | M |
At the curves where strength alone not all avails | M |
And the floundering in the mullock and the badly broken knees | M |
Before he learns to run upon the rails | M |
- | |
But it's like all other grafting and the man that has the grit | N |
Won't tucker out with one back racking shift | O |
When he's sweated to condition with his muscles firm and fit | N |
He'll disdain to stick at seven trucks of drift | O |
- | |
He can swarm around the pinches with a scramble and a dash | P |
And negotiate the inclines just as pat | Q |
And the sheets of iron rattle and the waters surge and splash | P |
As he shoots the full 'uns in along the plat | Q |
- | |
When the empties wind and clatter down the drive and through the dark | R |
As 'blowing' spells those backward journeys serve | S |
On before deep set in darkness glints and glows a feeble spark | R |
The candle burning dimly at the curve | S |
- | |
After cribs are polished off and when the smoke begins to rise | M |
And cling about the caps and in the cracks | M |
There's a passing satisfaction in the patriarchal lies | M |
Of the Geordie pioneers and Cousin Jacks | M |
- | |
Lanky Steve's unwritten stories of the fun of Fifty two | T |
Or the dashing days at Donkey Woman's Flat | Q |
Of traps and beaks and heavy yields and pugilists put through | T |
And lifting up the flag at Ballarat | Q |
- | |
Yes the truckers' toil is rather heavy grafting as a rule | U |
Much heavier than the wages well I know | F |
But the life's not full of trouble and the fellow is a fool | U |
Who cannot find some pleasure down below | F |
Edward Dyson
(1)
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