The Stranger's Friend Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDD EEFF CCDD AAGG HHII GGDD JJAA KKGG CCLL| The strangest things and the maddest things that a man can do or say | A |
| To the chaps and fellers and coves Out Back are matters of every day | A |
| Maybe on account of the lives they lead or the life that their hearts discard | B |
| But never a fool can be too mad or a hard case be too hard | B |
| I met him in Bourke in the Union days with which we have nought to do | C |
| Their creed was narrow their methods crude but they stuck to the cause like glue | C |
| He came into town from the Lost Soul Run for his grim half yearly bend | D |
| And because of a curious hobby he had he was known as The Stranger s Friend | D |
| - | |
| It is true to the region of adjectives when I say that the spree was grim | E |
| For to go on the spree was a sacred rite or a heathen rite to him | E |
| To shout for the travellers passing through to the land where the lost soul bakes | F |
| Till they all seemed devils of different breeds and his pockets were filled with snakes | F |
| - | |
| In the joyful mood in the solemn mood in his cynical stages too | C |
| In the maudlin stage in the fighting stage in the stage when all was blue | C |
| From the joyful hour when his spree commenced right through to the awful end | D |
| He never lost grip of his fixed idee that he was the Stranger s Friend | D |
| - | |
| The feller as knows he can battle around for his bloomin self he d say | A |
| I don t give a curse for the blanks I know the hard up bloke this way | A |
| Send the stranger round and I ll see him through and e en as the bushman spoke | G |
| The chaps and fellers would tip the wink to a casual hard up bloke | G |
| - | |
| And it wasn t only a bushman s bluff to the fame of the Friend they scored | H |
| For he d shout the stranger a suit of clothes and he d pay for the stranger s board | H |
| The worst of it was that he d skite all night on the edge of the stranger s bunk | I |
| And never got helplessly drunk himself till he d got the stranger drunk | I |
| - | |
| And the chaps and the fellers would speculate by way of a ghastly joke | G |
| As to who d be caught by the jim jams first the Friend or the hard up bloke | G |
| And the Joker would say that there wasn t a doubt as to who d be damned in the end | D |
| When the Devil got hold of a hard up bloke in the shape of the Stranger s Friend | D |
| - | |
| It mattered not to the Stranger s Friend what the rest might say or think | J |
| He always held that the hard up state was due to the curse of drink | J |
| To the evils of cards and of company But a young cove s built that way | A |
| And I was a bloomin fool meself when I started out he d say | A |
| - | |
| At the end of the spree in clean white moles clean shaven and cool as ice | K |
| He d give the stranger a bob or two and some straight Out Back advice | K |
| Then he d tramp away for the Lost Soul Run where the hot dust rose like smoke | G |
| Having done his duty to all mankind for he d stuck to a hard up bloke | G |
| - | |
| They ll say tis a song of a sot perhaps but the Song of a Sot is true | C |
| I have battled myself and you know you chaps what a man in the bush goes through | C |
| Let us hope when the last of his sprees is past and his cheques and his strength are done | L |
| That amongst the sober and thrifty mates the Stranger s Friend has one | L |
Henry Lawson
(1)
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About The Stranger's Friend
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