Analysis of Belated Conscience



To buy for school a copy-book
          I asked my Dad for two-pence;
He gave it with a gentle look,
          Although he had but few pence.
'Twas then I proved myself a crook
          And came a moral cropper,
I bought a penny copy-book
          And blued the other copper.

I spent it on a sausage roll
          Gulped down with guilt suggestion,
To the damnation of my soul
          And awful indigestion.
Poor Dad! His job was hard to hold;
          His mouths to feed were many;
Were he alive a millionfold
          I'd pay him for his penny.

Now nigh the grave I think with grief,
          Though other sins are many,
I am a liar and a thief
          'Cause once I stole a penny:
Yet be he pious as a friar
          It is my firm believing,
That every man has been a liar
          And most of us done thieving.


Scheme ABABACAC DEDEFGFG HGHGCICI
Poetic Form
Metre 11110101 1111111 11110101 111111 1111101 0101010 11010101 0101010 11110101 1111010 10010111 010010 11111111 1111010 010101 1111110 11011111 1101110 11010001 1111010 111101010 1111010 1100111010 0111110
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 811
Words 146
Sentences 7
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 180
Words per stanza (avg) 48
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
104

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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