The Men Who Come Behind Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDD EEDD FGDD HHDD IIJJ KKLL MMNO| There'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)
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About The Men Who Come Behind
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