Bruce Dawe was a prominent Australian poet and critic who lived from 1930 to 2020. "Life-Cycle" displays his typical mix of humor and philosophizing as it charts the stages in the life of Australian football fanatics. Newborn fans sleep in cribs covered in their team's colors (before, of course, they even know what a "team" is); adults live an emotional life defined by how well their team is doing; and elderly fans maintain the hope, right to the end, that this season might be the one in which their team finally ascends to glory. Beneath the poem's lighthearted surface lurks a more serious point: human beings crave community, passion, drama, and meaning, and sports offer these up in a similar way to religion and mythology. "Life-Cycle" appears in Dawe's 1968 collection An Eye for a Tooth.

• Read the full text of “Life-Cycle”

• “Life-Cycle” Summary

• “Life-Cycle” Themes

  • 

    Sports, Tradition, and Meaning

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-33
  • 

    Tribalism, Loyalty, and Community

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-33

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Life-Cycle”

  • Before Line 1, Lines 1-3

    For Big Jim ...
    ... a lifetime’s barracking.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 4-6

    Carn, they cry, ...
    ... … )

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 7-9

    Hoisted shoulder-high at ...
    ... daylight’s roaring empyrean

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 10-15

    Until, now, hearts ...
    ... covenant is sealed.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 16-18

    Hot pies and ...
    ... ladder into Heaven,

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 19-21

    And the tides ...
    ... after the grand-final…

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 22-27

    They will not ...
    ... continually the present,

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 28-33

    So that mythology ...
    ... hope of salvation.

    

    

    

    

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• “Life-Cycle” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Alliteration

    

    

    

    

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    Where alliteration appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “born”
    • Lines 2-2: “club-colours, / cots”
    • Line 2: “beribboned”
    • Line 3: “begun,” “barracking”
    • Line 4: “Carn,” “cry,” “Carn,” “feebly,” “first”
    • Line 5: “parents playfully,” “tussle”
    • Line 6: “possession,” “Tiger”
    • Line 7: “Hoisted,” “high”
    • Line 13: “sound,” “scarfed”
    • Line 16: “pies,” “potato-crisps”
    • Line 25: “passion persisting”
    • Line 27: “past,” “present”
    • Line 32: “crying Carn… Carn…”
    • Line 33: “seen,” “six-foot,” “salvation”

  • Allusion

    

    

    

    

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    Where allusion appears in the poem:

    • Line 6: “Ah, he’s a little Tiger!”
    • Line 9: “empyrean”
    • Line 10: “rapture”
    • Line 15: “and the covenant is sealed.”
    • Line 17: “they will forswear the Demons, cling to the Saints”
    • Line 18: “the ladder into Heaven”
    • Line 22: “They will not grow old as those from the more northern States grow old,”
    • Lines 26-27: “resurgent lions / and centaur-figures”
    • Lines 29-30: “Chicken Smallhorn return like the maize-god / in a thousand shapes”

  • Metaphor

    

    

    

    

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    Where metaphor appears in the poem:

    • Lines 7-15: “Hoisted shoulder-high at their first League game / they are like innocent monsters who have been years swimming / towards the daylight’s roaring empyrean / Until, now, hearts shrapnelled with rapture, / they break surface and are forever lost, / their minds rippling out like streamers / In the pure flood of sound, they are scarfed with light, a voice / like the voice of God booms from the stands / Ooohh you bludger! and the covenant is sealed.”
    • Line 18: “and behold their team going up the ladder into Heaven”
    • Line 19: “And the tides of life will be the tides of the home-team’s fortunes”
    • Line 25: “That passion persisting, like a race-memory, through the welter of seasons,”
    • Lines 29-30: “and Chicken Smallhorn return like the maize-god / in a thousand shapes,”
    • Lines 30-31: “the dancers changing / But the dance forever the same”

  • Repetition

    

    

    

    

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    Where repetition appears in the poem:

    • Line 4: “Carn, they cry, Carn… feebly at first”
    • Line 13: “voice”
    • Line 14: “voice”
    • Lines 18-19: “and behold their team going up the ladder into Heaven, / And the tides of life will be the tides of the home-team’s fortunes”
    • Line 22: “They will not grow old as those from the more northern States grow old,”
    • Line 30: “dancers”
    • Line 31: “dance”
    • Line 32: “crying Carn… Carn… (if feebly)”

  • Simile

    

    

    

    

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    Where simile appears in the poem:

    • Lines 8-13: “they are like innocent monsters who have been years swimming / towards the daylight’s roaring empyrean / Until, now, hearts shrapnelled with rapture, / they break surface and are forever lost, / their minds rippling out like streamers / In the pure flood of sound,”
    • Lines 13-15: “a voice / like the voice of God booms from the stands / Ooohh you bludger”
    • Line 25: “That passion persisting, like a race-memory, through the welter of seasons,”
    • Lines 28-30: “So that mythology may be perpetually renewed / and Chicken Smallhorn return like the maize-god / in a thousand shapes,”

• “Life-Cycle” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Victoria
  • Beribboned cots
  • Club-colours
  • Barracking
  • Carn
  • Rusk
  • Tiger
  • League game
  • Empyrean
  • Shrapnelled
  • Rapture
  • Streamers
  • Bludger
  • Covenant
  • Forswear the Demons, cling to the Saints
  • Ladder into Heaven
  • One-point win
  • Northern States
  • Three-quarter-time
  • Wind advantage
  • Final term
  • Race-memory
  • Welter
  • Resurgent Lions and Centaur-figures
  • Replenish
  • Old-timers
  • Maize-god
  • Chicken Smallhorn
  • Perpetually
  • Eaglehawk
  • (Location in poem: Lines 1-2: “When children are born in Victoria / they are wrapped in club-colours,”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Life-Cycle”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “Life-Cycle” Speaker

• “Life-Cycle” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “Life-Cycle”

• More “Life-Cycle” Resources

  • External Resources

    • Bruce Dawe at the NFSA — More information about the poet's life, career, and views, courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

    • A Bruce Dawe Documentary — Watch a film exploring the poet's life and work.  

    • Dawe's Obituary — An article about the poet written by John Kinsella (a fellow Australian writer).

    • Aussie Rules Football — Find out all you need to know about the sport in the poem.

    • A Podcast Documentary — Learn more about the poet from his biographer, Stephany Evans Stegall (includes a wonderful reading of the poem right up top!).  

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