Analysis of Shiela



When I played my penny whistle on the braes above Lochgyle
The heather bloomed about us, and we heard the peewit call;
As you bent above your knitting something fey was in your smile,
And fine and soft and slow the rain made silver on your shawl.
Your cheeks were pink like painted cheeks, your eyes a pansy blue . . .
My heart was in my playing, but my music was for you.

And now I play he organ in this lordly London town;
I play the lovely organ with a thousand folks in view.
They're wearing silk and satin, but I see a woolen gown,
And my heart's not in my music, for I'm thinking, lass, of you;
When you listened to a barefoot boy, who piped of ancient pain,
And your ragged shawl was pearly in the sweet, shy rain.

I'll play them mighty music - O I'll make them stamp and cheer;
I'll give the best that's in me, but I'll give it all for you.
I'll put my whole heart in it, for I feel that you are near,
Not yonder, sleeping always, where the peat is white with dew.
But I'll never live the rapture of the shepherd boy the while
I trilled for you my whistle on the braes above Lochgyle.


Scheme AAAAAB CBCBDD EBEBAA
Poetic Form
Metre 11111010101011 0101011011011 111011101011011 01010101110111 11011101110101 11101101110111 0111110011101 11010101010101 11010101110101 011101101110111 11101011111101 0110111000111 11110101111101 11011011111111 11111011111111 1101011011111 111010101010101 1111110101011
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 1,083
Words 217
Sentences 11
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 46
Words per line (avg) 12
Letters per stanza (avg) 278
Words per stanza (avg) 73
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:08 min read
51

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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