Analysis of Playboy



I greet the challenge of the dawn
         With weary, bleary eyes;
Into the sky so ashen wan
         I wait the sun to rise;
Then in the morning's holy hush,
         With heart of shame I hear
A robin from a lilac bush
         Pipe pure and clear.

All night in dive and dicing den,
         With wantons and with wine
I've squandered on wild, witless men
         The fortune that was mine;
The gold my father fought to save
         In folly I have spent;
And now to fill a pauper's grave
         My steps are bent.

See! how the sky is amber bright!
         The thrushes thrill their glee.
The dew-drops sparkle with delight,
         And yonder smiles the sea.
Oh let me plunge to drown the pain
         Of love and faith forgot:
Then purged I may return again,
         --Or I may not.


Scheme XAXAXXXX BCBCDEDE FGFGXHBH
Poetic Form
Metre 11010101 110101 01011101 110111 10010101 111111 0101011 1101 11010101 11011 11011101 010111 01110111 010111 0111011 1111 11011101 010111 01110101 010101 11111101 110101 11110101 1111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 789
Words 138
Sentences 8
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 176
Words per stanza (avg) 45
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
139

Robert William Service

Robert William Service was a poet and writer sometimes referred to as the Bard of the Yukon He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North including the poems The Shooting of Dan McGrew The Law of the Yukon and The Cremation of Sam McGee His writing was so expressive that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike prospector not the later-arriving bank clerk he actually was Robert William Service was born 16 January 1874 in Preston England but also lived in Scotland before emigrating to Canada in 1894 Service went to the Yukon Territory in 1904 as a bank clerk and became famous for his poems about this region which are mostly in his first two books of poetry He wrote quite a bit of prose as well and worked as a reporter for some time but those writings are not nearly as well known as his poems He travelled around the world quite a bit and narrowly escaped from France at the beginning of the Second World War during which time he lived in Hollywood California He died 11 September 1958 in France Incidentally he played himself in a movie called The Spoilers starring John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich more…

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