Analysis of Drifter



God gave you guts: don't let Him down;
Brace up, be worthy of His giving.
The road's a rut, the sky's a frown;
I know you're plumb fed up with living.
Fate birches you, and wry the rod . . .
Snap out, you fool! Don't let down God.

Oh, yes, you're on misfortune's shift,
And weary is the row your hoeing;
You have no home, you drift and drift,
Seems folks don't care the way you're going . . .
Well, make them care - you're not afraid:
Step on the gas - you'll make the grade.

Believe that God has faith in you,
In you His loving light is shining;
All of you that is fine and true
Is part of Him, so quit your whining . . .
buck up, son, for your Maker's sake:
Don't let Him down - give God a break.


Scheme ABABCC DBDBEE FBFBGG
Poetic Form
Metre 11111111 111101110 01010101 111111110 1110101 11111111 111111 010101110 11111101 111101110 11111101 11011101 01111101 011101110 11111101 111111110 11111101 11111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 689
Words 140
Sentences 16
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 167
Words per stanza (avg) 49
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
57

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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