The Man From Snowy River

Ten years or so past I went looking to find the poem that inspired the Tom Burlison movie, The Man from Snowy River. After a Google or related search discovered I could download Banjo Patterson’s book for free from Gutenberg Press. The .zip file led me to download and install µBook Reader to cope with the file. After reading the titular poem I put the book aside until just recently. Anyone who has sung Waltzing Matilda whether drunk or sober knows that Aussies particularly those in the Outback where these poems are set have unique colloquial expressions many of which only loosely translate into common English and Patterson uses a lot of them. The poems are written in rhyming couplets a style that seems all to quaint in this age of blank verse. They benefit from being read aloud. No one will mistake this verse for Tennyson or Wordsworth but it is well worth a read.