Analysis of Contentment



Bed and bread are all I need
          In my happy day;
Love of Nature is my creed,
          Unto her I pray;
Sun and sky my spirit feed
          On my happy way.

To no man I bow the head,
          None may master me;
I will eat my crust of bread
          Lauding liberty;
And upon my truckle bed
          Glory to be free.

You who grab for sordid gold,
          You who fight for fame,
Shiny dross your fingers hold,
          Empty is your aim.
--Soon we fatten graveyard mould,
          Rich and poor the same.

So from world of want and woe
          I retreat with dread;
Tuned to Nature glad I go
          With my bite of bread:
Praising God I lay me low
          On my truckle bed.


Scheme ABABAB CDCDCD EFEFEF GCGCGC
Poetic Form
Metre 1011111 01101 1110111 10011 1011101 11101 1111101 11101 1111111 10100 001111 10111 1111101 11111 1011101 10111 111011 10101 1111101 10111 1110111 11111 1011111 1111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 681
Words 124
Sentences 6
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 18
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 109
Words per stanza (avg) 31
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 08, 2023

37 sec read
97

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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