Peter Simson's Farm Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CCDD EEFF EEGG FFHH FFII JJFF FFKK EEEE EELL EEMJ NNFF HOEE PPQQ NNEE EEEESimson settled in the timber when his arm was strong and true | A |
And his form was straight and limber and he wrought the long day through | A |
In a struggle single handed and the trees fell slowly back | B |
Twenty thousand giants banded gainst a solitary jack | B |
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Through the fiercest days of summer you might hear his keen axe ring | C |
And re echo in the ranges hear his twanging crosscut sing | C |
There the great gums swayed and whispered and the birds were skyward blown | D |
As the circling hills saluted o er a bush king overthrown | D |
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Clearing grubbing in the gloaming strong in faith the man descried | E |
Heifers sleek and horses roaming in his paddocks green and wide | E |
Heard a myriad corn blades rustle in the breeze s soft caress | F |
And in every thew and muscle felt a joyous mightiness | F |
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So he felled the stubborn forest hacked and hewed with tireless might | E |
And a conqueror s peace went with him to his fern strewn bunk at night | E |
Forth he strode next morn delighting in the duty to be done | G |
Whistling shrilly to the magpies trilling carols to the sun | G |
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Back the clustered scrub was driven and the sun fell on the lands | F |
And the mighty stumps were riven tween his bare brown corded hands | F |
One time flooded sometimes parching still he did the work of ten | H |
And his dog leg fence went marching up the hills and down again | H |
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By the stony creek whose tiny streams slid o er the sunken boles | F |
To their secret silent meetings in the shaded waterholes | F |
Soon a garden flourished bravely gemmed with flowers and cool and green | I |
While about the hut a busy little wife was always seen | I |
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Came a day at length when gazing down the paddock from his door | J |
Simson saw his horses grazing where the bush was long before | J |
And he heard the joyous prattle of his children on the rocks | F |
And the lowing of the cattle and the crowing of the cocks | F |
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There was butter for the market there was fruit upon the trees | F |
There were eggs potatoes bacon and a tidy lot of cheese | F |
Still the struggle was not ended with the timber and the scrub | K |
For the mortgage is the toughest stump the settler has to grub | K |
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But the boys grew big and bolder one a sturdy brown faced lad | E |
With his axe upon his shoulder loved to go to work like dad | E |
And another in the saddle took a bush bred native s pride | E |
And he boasted he could straddle any nag his dad could ride | E |
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Though the work went on and prospered there was still hard work to do | E |
There were floods and droughts and bush fires and a touch of pleuro too | E |
But they laboured and the future held no prospect to alarm | L |
All the settlers said They re stickers up at Peter Simson s farm | L |
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One fine evening Pete was resting in the hush of coming night | E |
When his boys came in from nesting with a clamorous delight | E |
Each displayed a tiny rabbit and the farmer eyed them o er | M |
Then he stamped it was his habit and he smote his knee and swore | J |
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Two years later Simson s paddock showed dust coloured almost bare | N |
And too lean for hope of profit were the cows that pastured there | N |
And the man looked ten years older Like the tracks about the place | F |
Made by half a million rabbits were the lines on Simson s face | F |
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As he fought the bush when younger Simson stripped and fought again | H |
Fought the devastating hunger of the plague with might and main | O |
Neither moping nor despairing hoping still that times would mend | E |
Stubborn browed and sternly facing all the trouble Fate could send | E |
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One poor chicken to the acre Simson s land will carry now | P |
Starved the locusts have departed rust is thick upon the plough | P |
It is vain to think of cattle or to try to raise a crop | Q |
For the farmer has gone under and the rabbits are on top | Q |
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So the strong true man who wrested from the bush a homestead fair | N |
By the rabbits has been bested yet he does not know despair | N |
Though begirt with desolation though in trouble and in debt | E |
Though his foes pass numeration Peter Simson s fighting yet | E |
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He is old too soon and failing but he s game to start anew | E |
And he tells his hopeless neighbours what the Gov mint s goin to do | E |
Both his girls are in the city seeking places with the rest | E |
And his boys are tracking fortune in the melancholy West | E |
Edward George Dyson
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