The Bill Of The Ages Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCBB DDBB EEBB FFBB GGBB AABB HHBB IIBB| He shall live to the end of this mad old world he has lived since the world began | A |
| He never has done any good for himself but was good to every man | A |
| He never has done any good for himself and I m sure that he never will | B |
| He drinks and he swears and he fights at times and his name is mostly Bill | B |
| He carried a freezing mate to his cave and nursed him for all I know | C |
| When Europe was mostly a sheet of ice thousands of years ago | C |
| He has stuck to many a mate since then he is with us everywhere still | B |
| He loves and gambles when he is young and the girls stick up for Bill | B |
| - | |
| He has rowed to a wreck when the lifeboat failed with Jim in a crazy boat | D |
| He has given his lifebelt many a time and sunk that another might float | D |
| He has stood em off while others escaped when the niggers rushed from the hill | B |
| And rescue parties who came too late have found what was left of Bill | B |
| - | |
| He has thirsted on deserts that others might drink he has given lest others should lack | E |
| He has staggered half blinded through fire or drought with a sick man on his back | E |
| He is first to the rescue in tunnel or shaft from Newcastle to Broken Hill | B |
| When the water breaks in or the fire breaks out Oh a leader of men is Bill | B |
| - | |
| No humane societies medals he wears for the fearful deaths he braved | F |
| He seems ashamed of the good he did and ashamed of the lives he saved | F |
| If you chance to know of a noble deed he has done you had best keep still | B |
| If you chance to know of a kindly act you mustn t let on to Bill | B |
| - | |
| He is fierce at a wrong he is firm in right he is kind to the weak and mild | G |
| He will slave all day and sit up all night by the side of a neighbour s child | G |
| For a woman in trouble he d lay down his life nor think as another man will | B |
| He s a man all through but no other man s wife has ever been worse for Bill | B |
| - | |
| He is good for the noblest sacrifice he can do what few other men can | A |
| He can break his heart that the girl he loves may marry a better man | A |
| There s many a mother and wife to night whose heart and whose eyes will fill | B |
| When she thinks of the days of the long ago when she well might have stuck to Bill | B |
| - | |
| Maybe he s in trouble or hard up now and travelling far for work | H |
| Or fighting a dead past down to night in a lone camp west of Bourke | H |
| When he s happy and flush take your sorrow to him and borrow as much as you will | B |
| But when he s in trouble or stony broke you never will hear from Bill | B |
| - | |
| And when because of its million sins this earth is cracked like a shell | I |
| He will stand by a mate at the Judgment Seat and comfort him down in Well | I |
| I haven t much sentiment left but let the cynic sneer as he will | B |
| Perhaps God will fix up the world again for the sake of the likes of Bill | B |
Henry Lawson
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