Analysis of Toby

John Le Gay Brereton 1871 (Sydney) – 1933



Hey, Toby, Toby, Toby!—Dead?
The silence is a flood
That closes, choking, overhead,
And chills the living blood.

The leaping friend, whose jolly bark
Was greeting every night,
No more to thrill the summer dark
With welcome of delight?

Beside his grave I bend the knee,
And O, my eyes are dim.
He hunted for the dog in me:
I found the man in him.


Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF
Poetic Form Traditional rhyme
Quatrain 
Metre 11010101 010101 11010101 010101 01011101 1101001 11110101 110101 01111101 011111 11010101 110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 344
Words 68
Sentences 7
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 88
Words per stanza (avg) 22
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 22, 2023

20 sec read
49

John Le Gay Brereton

John Le Gay Brereton was an Australian poet, critic and professor of English at the University of Sydney. He was the first president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers when it was formed in Sydney in 1928. more…

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