Analysis of My Cancer Cure
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
"A year to live," the Doctor said;
"There is no cure," and shook his head.
Ah me! I felt as good as dead.
Yet quite resigned to fate was I,
Thinking: "Well, since I have to die
'Twill be beneath the open sky."
And so I sought a wildsome wood
Wherein a lonely cabin stood,
And doomed myself to solitude,
And there was no one I would see:
Each morn a farmer brought to me
My food and hung it on a tree.
Six eggs he brought, and milk a quart,
Enough for wretches of my sort
Whose life is fated to be short.
At night I laid me on the round,
In robe of buffalo wrapped round . . .
'Twas strange that I should sleep so sound.
The farmer man I seldom saw;
I pierced my eggs and sucked them raw;
Sweet mil refreshed my ravaged maw.
So slowly days and weeks went by,
And always I would wonder why
I did not die. . . I did not die.
Thus brooding on my grievous lot
The world of men I fast forgot.
And in the wildwood friends I sought.
The brook bright melodies would sing,
The groves with feathered rapture ring,
And bring me strange, sweet comforting. . . .
Then all at once I knew that I
Miraculously would not die:
When doctors fail let Nature try.
Scheme | AAABBB CCXDDD EEEFFF GXGBBB HHXIII BBB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01110101 11110111 11111111 11011111 10111111 11010101 0111011 01010101 011110 01111111 11010111 11011101 11110101 0111111 11110111 11111101 0111011 11111111 01011101 11110111 11011101 11010111 0111101 11111111 11011101 01111101 0001111 01110011 01110101 01111100 11111111 01000111 11011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,122 |
Words | 228 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 3 |
Lines Amount | 33 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 144 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 39 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:07 min read
- 98 Views
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"My Cancer Cure" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32267/my-cancer-cure>.
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