Analysis of My Rocking-Chair



When I am old and worse for wear
I want to buy a rocking-chair,
And set it on a porch where shine
The stars of morning-glory vine;
With just beyond, a gleam of grass,
A shady street where people pass;
And some who come with time to spare,
To yarn beside my rocking-chair.
Then I will light my corn-cob pipe
And dose and dream and rarely gripe.
My morning paper on my knee
I won't allow to worry me.
For if I know the latest news
Is bad,--to read it I'll refuse,
Since I have always tried to see
The side of life that clicks with glee.

And looking back with days nigh done,
I feel I've had a heap of fun.
Of course I guess that more or less
It's you yourself make happiness
And if your needs are small and few,
Like me you may be happy too:
And end up with a hope, a prayer,
A chuckle in a rocking-chair.


Scheme AABBCCAADDEEFFEE GGXXHHAA
Poetic Form
Metre 11110111 11110101 01110111 01110101 11010111 01011101 01111111 11011101 11111111 01010101 11010111 11011101 11110101 11111101 1111111 01111111 01011111 11110111 11111111 11011100 01111101 11111101 01110101 01000101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 788
Words 166
Sentences 7
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 16, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 306
Words per stanza (avg) 82
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 23, 2023

51 sec read
175

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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