Old Botany Bay
Dame Mary Gilmore 1865 (Crookwell, New South Wales) – 1962 (Sydney, New South Wales)
"I'm old
Botany Bay;
stiff in the joints,
little to say.
I am he
who paved the way,
that you might walk
at your ease to-day;
I was the conscript
sent to hell
to make in the desert
the living well;
I bore the heat,
I blazed the track-
furrowed and bloody
upon my back.
I split the rock;
I felled the tree:
The nation was-
Because of me!
Old Botany Bay
Taking the sun
from day to day...
shame on the mouth
that would deny
the knotted hands
that set us high!
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 28 sec read
- 973 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XAXA BAXA XCXC XDBD XBXB AXAXEXE |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic dimeter |
Characters | 437 |
Words | 95 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 7 |
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"Old Botany Bay" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/7433/old-botany-bay>.
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