Before We Were Married
Before We Were Married - meaning Summary
Reminiscing Pre-marriage Wanderings
The speaker recalls life and travels before marriage, evoking droughted plains, riverbanks, telegraph work, camp life and a moonlit train journey. Scenes emphasize itinerant labor, mateship and small domestic details that anchor memory. Repetition of the refrain expresses a wistful wish to return to or remain in that earlier freedom and intimacy, contrasting settled marriage with the roaming, shared life once lived.
Read Complete AnalysesBlacksoil plains were grey soil, grey soil in the drought. Fifteen years away, and five hundred miles out; Swag and bag and billy carried all our care Before we were married, and I wish that I were there. River banks were grassy grassy in the bends, Running through the land where mateship never ends; We belled the lazy fishing lines and droned the time away Before we were married, and I wish it were to-day. Working down the telegraph winters’ gales and rains Cross the tumbled scenery of Marlborough plains, Beach and bluff and cook’s tent and the cook was a cow Before we were married, but I wish that it was now. The rolling road to Melbourne, and grey-eyed girl in fur One arm to a stanchion and one round her; Seat abaft the skylight when the moon had set Before she was married, and I wish it wasn’t yet.
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