Interesting you should post this picture. I'm currently working on an essay concerning Henry Lawson's poem "The Water Lily". Being a Virginian, the only reason I've ever even heard about y'alls great Bush Poet was because his poem was recorded as a song by the late Ralph Stanley. I was greatly impressed by the sorrow underlaid with cool irony that Lawson captures in his poem, however, the one detail which originally threw me off from liking the poem outright was the line "a beautiful child, with butterfly wings." Every image I conjured up in my mind struck me as tacky and garish and it nearly threw me off of the poem altogether. This painting though, very closely captures the effect I believe Mr. Lawson was trying to achieve. Here's a link to the poem, http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-henry/the-water-lily-0108052
Interesting you should post this picture. I'm currently working on an essay concerning Henry Lawson's poem "The Water Lily". Being a Virginian, the only reason I've ever even heard about y'alls great Bush Poet was because his poem was recorded as a song by the late Ralph Stanley. I was greatly impressed by the sorrow underlaid with cool irony that Lawson captures in his poem, however, the one detail which originally threw me off from liking the poem outright was the line "a beautiful child, with butterfly wings." Every image I conjured up in my mind struck me as tacky and garish and it nearly threw me off of the poem altogether. This painting though, very closely captures the effect I believe Mr. Lawson was trying to achieve. Here's a link to the poem, http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-henry/the-water-lily-0108052
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