Analysis of Prayer



You talk o' prayer an' such -
Well, I jest don't know how;
I guess I got as much
Religion as a cow.
I fight an' drink an' swear;
Red hell I often raise,
But never said a prayer
        In all my days.

I'm honest, right enough;
Don't take no stock in crimes;
I'm jest a dockside tough,
An' yet . . . an' yet sometimes,
If I should happen by
A church-door open wide
The chances are that I
        Will sneak inside.

It's kin o' peaceful there,
Jest sittin' in a pew;
There's sompin' in the air
That rests me through an' through;
It does me heaps o' good
To see them candles glow,
So soothin' to the mood . . .
        Why? - I don't know.

Unless that sittin' still
Can be a kind o' prayer;
My heart jest seems to fill
Wi' peace . . . Oh, God don't care
For guys the likes o' me;
I just ain't in His line:
But when the Cross I see,
        I make the sign.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH CICIXJXJ KCKCLMLM
Poetic Form
Metre 111111 111111 111111 010101 111111 111101 110101 0111 110101 111101 11011 111101 111101 011101 010111 1101 111101 11001 11001 111111 111111 111101 11101 1111 01111 110111 111111 111111 110111 111011 110111 1101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 830
Words 168
Sentences 16
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 18
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 147
Words per stanza (avg) 44
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 28, 2023

53 sec read
94

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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