The Song and the Sigh
The creek went down with a broken song,'Neath the sheoaks high;The waters carried the song along,And the oaks a sigh.
The song and the sigh went winding by,Went winding down;Circling the foot of the mountain high,And the hillside brown.
They were hushed in the swamp of the Dead Man's Crime,Where the curlews cried;But they reached the river the self-same time,And there they died.
And the creek of life goes winding on,Wandering by;And bears for ever, its course upon,A song and a sigh.
Words in this poem
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Song and the Sigh is in the public domain. This text is taken from In the Days When the World Was Wide, and Other Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #214; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Lawson, The Song and the Sigh, in In the Days When the World Was Wide (1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #214, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lawson-world-was-wide/the-song-and-the-sigh.html, id L23242.
Form and metre
The Song and the Sigh is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABAB songA · highB · alongA · sighB
- 2 ABAB byA · downB · highA · brownB
- 3 ABAB crimeA · criedB · timeA · diedB
- 4 ABAB onA · byB · uponA · sighB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The creek went down with a broken song, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| 'Neath the sheoaks high; | 4 | ···· |
| The waters carried the song along, | 9 | ·/˘/˘··˘/ |
| And the oaks a sigh. | 5 | ····· |
| The song and the sigh went winding by, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Went winding down; | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Circling the foot of the mountain high, | 10 | /˘˘····/˘· |
| And the hillside brown. | 5 | ··/·· |
| They were hushed in the swamp of the Dead Man's Crime, | 11 | ··········· |
| Where the curlews cried; | 5 | ····· |
| But they reached the river the self-same time, | 10 | ····/˘···· |
| And there they died. | 4 | ···· |
| And the creek of life goes winding on, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Wandering by; | 4 | /˘˘· |
| And bears for ever, its course upon, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| A song and a sigh. | 5 | ····· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.