The Australian Marseillaise Or, A Song For The Sydney Poor Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCD EFGH IAIAJAKA ADADLMLM LNLNODOD DDDDPOPO LQLQDODO DDDDLRLRSing the strong proud song of Labour | A |
Toss the ringing music high | B |
Liberty's a nearer neighbour | A |
Than she was in days gone by | B |
Workmen's weary wives and daughters | C |
Sing the songs of liberty | D |
Men hail men across the waters | C |
Men reply across the sea | D |
- | |
We are marching on and onward | E |
To the silver streak of dawn | F |
To the dynasty of mankind | G |
We are marching on | H |
- | |
Long the rich have been protected | I |
By the walls that can't endure | A |
By the walls that they erected | I |
To divide them from the poor | A |
Crumbling now they should not trust them | J |
For their end is drawing near | A |
Walls of Cant and walls of Custom | K |
Walls of Ignorance and Fear | A |
- | |
Tyrants grip your weapons firmer | A |
Grip them firmly by the helves | D |
For the poor begin to murmur | A |
Loudly now among themselves | D |
Hear us dare to say that Heaven | L |
Gave us equal rights with you | M |
Dare to say the world was given | L |
Unto all and not the few | M |
- | |
Tell us that the law has risen | L |
Make us bend beneath its sway | N |
Throw our leaders into prison | L |
Wrong us in the light of day | N |
Drive us to our dens forgetting | O |
All our woe as greed forgets | D |
While our weapons we are whetting | O |
On your levelled bayonets | D |
- | |
Treat us like the beasts you'd make us | D |
Pen us close in wretched sties | D |
'Til our patience shall forsake us | D |
And like wolves we will arise | D |
Louder still for this shall rattle | P |
Rifle shots and sword blades ring | O |
On the blood wet fields of battle | P |
In the days of reckoning | O |
- | |
We shall rise to prove us human | L |
Worthy of a human life | Q |
When our starved and maddened women | L |
Lead our armies on to strife | Q |
When our war hymns wake the valleys | D |
And the rushing missiles shriek | O |
From your barricaded alleys | D |
'Til your cannon cease to speak | O |
- | |
Then when Mammon Castle crashes | D |
To the earth and trampled lies | D |
Then from out the blood and ashes | D |
True Republics shall arise | D |
Then the world shall rest a season | L |
First since first the world began | R |
In the reign of right and reason | L |
And the dynasty of man | R |
Henry Lawson
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