A Song Of Brave Men Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCC DDEEFF GGHHII IIJJKK AALLMM IIIINN IIIIOO PPQQRS TUVVWW XXIIYYMan is the Sea your master Sea and is man your slave | A |
This is the song of brave men who never know they are brave | A |
Ceaselessly watching to save you stranger from foreign lands | B |
Soundly asleep in your state room full sail for the Goodwin Sands | B |
Life is a dream they tell us but life seems very real | C |
When the lifeboat puts out from Ramsgate and the buggers put out from Deal | C |
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A gun from the lightship a rocket a cry of Turn out me lad | D |
Ship on the Sands they're shouting and a rush of the oilskin clad | D |
The lifeboat leaping and swooping in the wake of the fighting tug | E |
And the luggers afloat in Hell's water Oh tourist with cushion and rug | E |
Think of the freezing fury without one minute's relief | F |
When they stood all night in the blackness by the wreck of the Indian Chief | F |
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Lashed to their seats and crouching to the spray that froze as it flew | G |
Twenty six hours in midwinter That was the lifeboat's crew | G |
Twice she was swamped and she righted in the rush of the heavy seas | H |
And her tug was mostly buried but these were common things these | H |
And the luggers go out whenever there's a hope to get them afloat | I |
And these things they do for nothing and those fishermen say Oh it's nowt | I |
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Enemy Friend or Stranger In every sea or land | I |
And across the lives of most men run stretches of Goodwin Sand | I |
And across the life of a nation as across the track of a ship | J |
Lies the hidden rock or the iceberg within the horizon dip | J |
And wise men know them and warn us with lightship or voice or pen | K |
But we strike and the fool survivors sail on to strike again | K |
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But this is a song of brave men wherever is aught to save | A |
Christian or Jew or Wowser and I knew one who was brave | A |
British or French or German Dane or Latin or Dutch | L |
Scandies that ignorant British reckon with Dagoes and such | L |
Where'er on a wreck titanic in a scene of wild despair | M |
The officers call for assistance a Swede or a Norse is there | M |
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Tale of a wreck titanic with the last boat over the side | I |
And a brave young husband fighting his clinging hysterical bride | I |
He strikes her fair on the temple while the decks are scarce afloat | I |
And he kisses her once on the forehead and he drops her into the boat | I |
So he goes to his death to save her and she lives to remember and lie | N |
Or be true to his love and courage But that's how brave men die | N |
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I hate the slander Be British and I don't believe it that's flat | I |
No British sailor and captain would stoop to such cant as that | I |
What in the rush of cowards of the help from before the mast | I |
Of the two big Swedes and the Norse who stood by the mate to the last | I |
In every mining disaster in a New World mining town | O |
In one of the rescue parties an Olsen or Hans goes down | O |
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Men who fought for their village away on their country's edge | P |
The priest with his cross and a musket and the blacksmith with his sledge | P |
The butcher with cleaver and pistols and the notary with his pike | Q |
And the clerk with what he laid hands on but all were ready to strike | Q |
And Tennyson notwithstanding when the hour of danger was come | R |
The shopman has struck full often with his cheating yard wand home | S |
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This is a song of brave men ever the wide world o'er | T |
Starved and crippled and murdered by the land they are fighting for | U |
Left to freeze in the trenches sent to drown by the Cape | V |
Throttled by army contractors and strangled bv old red tape | V |
Fighting for Home and Country or Glory or what you choose | W |
Sacrificed for the Syndicates and a monarch in with the Jews | W |
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Australia your trial is coming Down with the party strife | X |
Send Your cackling lying women back to the old Home Life | X |
Brush trom your Parliament benches the legal chaff and dust | I |
Make Federation perfect as sooner or later you must | I |
Scatter your crowded cities cut up your States and so | Y |
Give your brave sons of the future the ghost of a White Man's show | Y |
Henry Lawson
(1)
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