To The Theoretical Selector Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCC DDEFGG HHIIDD JJKKLL MMNNOO PPQQRRR| WOULD YOU be the King the strong man first in council and in toil | A |
| To the men who war with nature for possession of the soil | A |
| Take an axe upon your shoulder take a billy and a rug | B |
| And go forward in the forest where no man has cut and dug | B |
| Where the scrub ferns grow like magic and the gum trees you must fell | C |
| Have their topmost boughs in heaven and their tap roots deep as hell | C |
| - | |
| Take the land the Powers would cheerfully devote to Smith or Brown | D |
| Two miles or more from water and a hundred miles from town | D |
| Fell and scrub and hew and hunger and when seven weeks are gone | E |
| You may have a clearing large enough to build a hut upon | F |
| Then you furnish it with saplings and you carpet it with loam | G |
| And you bring the kids and missus to their charming country home | G |
| - | |
| Rising early with the jackass like a man of pith and push | H |
| With axe in hand you sally forth to face the stubborn bush | H |
| Tis a mighty undertaking and the odds are hard enough | I |
| But the settler must be stubborn and the settler must be tough | I |
| And he strikes from morn till even with his strong arm bare and brown | D |
| And he counts his gain by inches when the big gum rattles down | D |
| - | |
| So you slave and strive and suffer for it s fearful work and slow | J |
| Ere the cabbages are solid and the spuds have room to grow | J |
| By and bye to fruit and fowls and swine as city swells advise | K |
| You resort to make a fortune but the venture proves unwise | K |
| For the fruit trees blight and wither and the pigs die in their pens | L |
| And the drought destroys the ducklings and the dingoes eat the hens | L |
| - | |
| Years go on and still the bush wall rings your narrow clearing round | M |
| But you ve won a few good acres and a crop is on the ground | M |
| And you harvest single handed and you rake the stubble clean | N |
| For you lack the cash for wages and the marvellous machine | N |
| Still you re thankful for small mercies though you re often sorely pushed | O |
| When the missus hasn t sunstroke and the baby isn t bushed | O |
| - | |
| Then at last when worn with work and warped with years and very grey | P |
| When your mastering the mortgage and the railroad runs your way | P |
| When your farm is looking home like and your sons are grown up men | Q |
| You may talk to brown faced farmers you may try to teach them then | Q |
| And if any kid gloved critic starts to give you points on grain | R |
| And a little hot house farming does to make your errors plain | R |
| You will rise up with a waddy and you ll sympathise with Cain | R |
Edward George Dyson
(1)
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