Analysis of The Old Armchair



In all the pubs from Troon to Ayr
Grandfather's father would repair
With Bobby Burns, a drouthy pair,
                                The glass to clink;
And oftenwhiles, when not too "fou,"
They'd roar a bawdy stave or two,
From midnight muk to morning dew,
                                And drink and drink.

And Grandfather, with eye aglow
And proper pride, would often show
An old armchair where long ago
                                The Bard would sit;
Reciting there with pawky glee
"The Lass that Made the Bed for Me;"
Or whiles a rhyme about the flea
                            That ne'er was writ.

Then I would seek the Poet's chair
And plant my kilted buttocks there,
And read with joy the Bard of Ayr
                                In my own tongue;
The Diel, the Daisy and the Louse
The Hare, the Haggis and the Mouse,
(What fornication and carouse!)
                                When I was young.

Though Kipling, Hardy, Stevenson
Have each my admiration won,
Today, my rhyme-race almost run,
                                My fancy turns
To him who did Pegasus prod
For me, Bard of my native sod,
The sinner best-loved of God -
                            Rare Robbie Burns.


Scheme ABBCXDDC EEEFGGGF BBAHIIXH JJJKLLLK
Poetic Form
Metre 01011111 1010101 1101011 0111 011111 11010111 1111101 0101 0101101 01011101 1111101 0111 0101111 01110111 11010101 1111 11110101 0111101 01110111 0111 01010001 0101001 11001 1111 11010100 1110101 0111111 1101 11111001 11111101 0101111 1101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,174
Words 181
Sentences 6
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 183
Words per stanza (avg) 44
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

54 sec read
118

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…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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