Analysis of The Trail Of No Return



So now I take a bitter road
         Whereon no bourne I see,
And wearily I lift the load
         That once I bore with glee.
For me no more by sea or shore
         Adventure's star shall burn,
As I forsake wild ways to take
         The Trail of No Return.

Such paths of peril I have trod:
         In sun and shade they lay.
And some went wistfully to God,
         And some the devil's way.
But there is one I may not shun,
         Though long my life's sojourn:
A dawn will break when I must take
         The Trail of No Return.

Farewell to friends, good-bye to foes,
         Adieu to smile or frown;
My voyaging is nigh its close,
         And dark is drifting down.
With weary feet my way I beat,
         Yet holy light discern . . .
So let me take without heart-break
         The Trail of No Return.


Scheme ababxcdC efefxcdC xgxgxcdC
Poetic Form
Metre 11110101 11111 01001101 111111 11111111 1111 11011111 011101 11110111 010111 01110011 010101 11111111 111110 01111111 011101 1111111 011111 111111 011101 11011111 110101 11110111 011101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 807
Words 144
Sentences 11
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 178
Words per stanza (avg) 48
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

44 sec read
111

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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