The Men Who Come Behind Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDD EEDD FGDD HHDD IIJJ KKLL MMNOThere's a class of men and women who are always on their guard | A |
Cunning treacherous suspicious feeling softly grasping hard | A |
Brainy yet without the courage to forsake the beaten track | B |
Cautiously they feel their way behind a bolder spirit s back | B |
If you save a bit of money and you start a little store | C |
Say an oyster shop for instance where there wasn t one before | C |
When the shop begins to pay you and the rent is off your mind | D |
You will see another started by a chap that comes behind | D |
- | |
So it is and so it might have been my friend with me and you | E |
When a friend of both and neither interferes between the two | E |
They will fight like fiends forgetting in their passion mad and blind | D |
That the row is mostly started by the folk who come behind | D |
- | |
They will stick to you like sin will while your money comes and goes | F |
But they ll leave you when you haven t got a shilling in your clothes | G |
You may get some help above you but you ll nearly always find | D |
That you cannot get assistance from the men who come behind | D |
- | |
There are many far too many in the world of prose and rhyme | H |
Always looking for another s footsteps on the sands of time | H |
Journalistic imitators are the meanest of mankind | D |
And the grandest themes are hackneyed by the pens that come behind | D |
- | |
If you strike a novel subject write it up and do not fail | I |
They will rhyme and prose about it till your very own is stale | I |
As they raved about the region that the wattle boughs perfume | J |
Till the reader cursed the bushman and the stink of wattle bloom | J |
- | |
They will follow in your footsteps while you re groping for the light | K |
But they ll run to get before you when they see you re going right | K |
And they ll trip you up and baulk you in their blind and greedy heat | L |
Like a stupid pup that hasn t learned to trail behind your feet | L |
- | |
Take your loads of sin and sorrow on more energetic backs | M |
Go and strike across the country where there are not any tracks | M |
And we fancy that the subject could be further treated here | N |
But we ll leave it to be hackneyed by the fellows in the rear | O |
Henry Lawson
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Men Who Come Behind poem by Henry Lawson
Best Poems of Henry Lawson