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My Country
Dorothea Mackellar
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft, dim skies -
I know but I cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding plains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold rush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back three-fold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...
A opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
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Analysis of the poem "My Country"
The poem "My Country" was written by Dorothea Mackallar in 1908. She was 23 years old. It gained so much fame that generations of Australian schoolchildren have learned this poem.
The poem "My Country" deals with nature descriptions about Australia. It was writ-ten in order to inform people about the beauty and the wilderness of this country. The genre is part of bush poetry and the poem doesn't tell a story.
Dorothea Mackellar uses words everybody understands and appreciates, but the phrases and words often have another meaning than normally "my homing thoughts will fly" (l. 48). So the reader has to 'read between the lines' to understand the meaning like "an opal-hearted country" (l. 41). This effect is called ambiguity. The language is stan-dard British English, without colloquial expressions.
The words she uses sound romantic "I love her jewel-sea" (l. 14) and the reader can dream and see in front of his eyes the pictures she produces, "a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges" (l. 10f.) Words such as "love" (l. 1) and "my heart, my country" (l. 25) appeal to the reader's emotions. Everybody feels that such words have a strong effect. But on the other hand she writes about negative points in life "when sick at heart, around us, we see the cattle die" (l.27f.) and especially on this continent "of droughts and flooding rains" (l. 12). Nature catastrophes like "flood and fire" (l. 35) are in contrast to "the hot gold hush of moon" (l. 20). The poet describes the contrast with the contrasting words "her beauty and her terror" (l. 15).
She writes about her own experience, "I know but cannot share it, my love is other-wise" (l. 7f.), but people only understand what she means when they have the same ex-perience like her "all you who have not loved her, you will not understand" (l. 43f.)
There is a regular rhythm in the poem. The sound and rhythm flow like a river. Words like "flooding rains" (l.12) or "it running in your veins" (l. 4) underline this ef-fect. She uses these words consciously to demonstrate the flow of life.
When the reader reads in line 31 "the drumming of an army" he associates soldiers are walking in steps. This is the sound of the heart of nature: 'Boom, boom, boom'.
The "sapphire" (l. 19) and the "opal" (l. 41) are valuable precious stones with special colours. By using these words people get a special association and the stones sound valuable and rich. Every person wants to have so nice stones when they see the colours in front of their eyes and the precious stones near them to grab the unattainable splen-dours. The audience almost 'feels and hears' the colours.
The poem is divided into six stanzas. Each stanza has eight lines. There is no regular rhyme scheme, but in every stanza there exist some rhyming words, for example, "plains" (l. 10) and "rains" (l. 12) or "sea" (l. 14) and "me" (l. 16). When the poet uses rhyming words, it is a rhyme across the lines.
Dorothea Mackellar uses figures of speech like enjambment, for example, "for flood and fire and famine she pays us back three-fold" (l. 35 f.), and repetition of words "love" (l. 1, 5, 8...) or phrases like "core of my heart, my country!" (l. 25 and l. 33).
The poem is full of metaphors, for example "an opal-hearted country" (l. 41). Some metaphors include personification. For instance, she uses "her" (l. 15) for nature and re-gards nature as a mother or woman. This enables the reader to identify with nature and nature is like a human being with mistakes.
Every line starts with a capital letter. The rest of the entire poem is written with small letters, except "the Rainbow Gold" (l. 34).
The poem is written in a clear, literary diction, which presents the various impres-sions of a country full of opposites. This is why the reader can feel how vivid, powerful, colourful and unpredictable the country is.
By also mentioning some negative aspects of Australia, the poet shows that she is ob-jective and does not beautify anything. However, her all-embracing love makes her ac-cept both positive and negative sides of Australia.
The poet isn't in Australia. "I know but cannot share it, my love is otherwise" (l. 7f.). Maybe she is in England, the mother colony of Australia, and thinks and writes about her beloved home country from a distance. Dorothea Mackellar is homesick, "my hom-ing thoughts will fly" (l. 48).
Sophia Buck, 13a
Australia - a prose poem by Ania Walwicz
You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing
nothing.You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much.
With your big sea. Beach beach beach. Iīve seen enough already. You
Dumb dirty city with bar stools. Youīre ugly. You silly shoppingtown. You
copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but youīre not very friendly.
You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You donīt know how to be
with me. Road road tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. Youīre poor and spread thin. You big. So what. Iīm small. Itīs whatīs in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night. You go to sleep too early. You donīt excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You donīt match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You make me a dot in the nowhere. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. Youīre dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen.
You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at
lunchtime. Running around fot nothing. You never accept me. For your
own. You always ask me where Iīm from. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different. You donīt adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak.
You think youīre better than me. You donīt like me. You donīt have any
Interest in another country. Idiot centre of your own self. You think the rest of the world walks around without shoes or electric light. You donīt go anywhere. You stay at home. You like one another. You go crazy on Saturday night. You get drunk. You donīt like me and you donīt like women. You put your arm around men in bars. Youīre rough. I canīt speak to you. You burly burly. Youīre just silly to me. You big man. Poor with all your money. You ugly furniture. You ugly house. Relaxed in your summer stupor: All year. Never fully awake. Dull at school. Wait for other people to tell you what to do. Follow the leader. Canīt imagine. Work horse. Thick legs. You go to work in the morning. You shiver on a tram.
Analysis of the poem "Australia"
"Australia", a prose poem written by Ania Walwicz, is about Australia and Australian society.
The speaker describes the country and its society in a very negative way and criticises them.
The author Ania Walwicz was born in Poland but lives in Australia. So she has had a lot of experiences with Australians. We can see that she has been disappointed by Australia and its society. For example, she describes that Australians laugh at her, don't like her and don't accept her.
To show her unhappiness with Australia and to stress that Australia isn't quite as good as many people think, she uses different figures of speech and imagery:
She often uses alliteration, for example "You scorched suntanned" (l. 4/5), "You silly shopping town" (l. 9/10).
The whole poem is a personification. The speaker talks in a monolog to the country, as if to a person: "You big awful." (l. 24)
There is a lot of repetition, too:
"Beach, beach, beach" (l. 7), "You average average" (l. 30)
In line 11/12 antithesis is used to illustrate the differences: "You try to be friendly but you're not very friendly."
The sentences "You're poor and spread thin" (l.18) and "It's what's in" (l. 19) are couplets.
In line 21 a metaphor illustrates the badness of Australia: "You dead at night."
The poem is written like a story. So there are a lot of enjambments and end-stopped lines. (e. g. l. 28/29, l. 53)
"You like one another" (. 42/43) is a simile because it is an image that is created through a direct, stated comparison.
But this sentence is also an example of the incorrect English the author sometimes uses in the poem. This is because the author was born in Poland and English is not her native language.
The poet's diction consists of a lot of verbs and adjectives because the poet describes the things she has gone through in Australia.
So you can see that the poet tries to illustrate the "badness" of Australia and its society by using figure of speech and imagery.
For the poet it is very important to show this. You can see this clearly through her use of repetition.
After reading the poem the reader is offered a contrasting view of Australia and the people who live there so that the "paradise-picture" of Australia is lost.
All in all you can say that the poet has achieved her aim, to change the reader's view of Australia. However, the picture the poet gives isn't objective.
Julia Frieß, 13A
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