Analysis of Stamp Collector
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
My worldly wealth I hoard in albums three,
My life collection of rare postage stamps;
My room is cold and bare as you can see,
My coat is old and shabby as a tramp's;
Yet more to me than balances in banks,
My albums three are worth a million francs.
I keep them in that box beside my bed,
For who would dream such treasures it could hold;
But every day I take them out and spread
Each page, to gloat like miser o'er his gold:
Dearer to me than could be child or wife,
I would defend them with my very life.
They are my very life, for every night
over my catalogues I pore and pore;
I recognize rare items with delight,
Nothing I read but philatelic lore;
And when some specimen of choice I buy,
In all the world there's none more glad than I.
Behold my gem, my British penny black;
To pay its price I starved myself a year;
And many a night my dinner I would lack,
But when I bought it, oh, what radiant cheer!
Hitler made war that day - I did not care,
So long as my collection he would spare.
Look - my triangular Cape of Good Hope.
To purchase it I had to sell my car.
Now in my pocket for some sous I grope
To pay my omnibus when home is far,
And I am cold and hungry and footsore,
In haste to add some beauty to my store.
This very day, ah, what a joy was mine,
When in a dingy dealer's shop I found
This franc vermillion, eighteen forty-nine . . .
How painfully my heart began to pound!
(It's weak they say), I paid the modest price
And tremblingly I vanished in a trice.
But oh, my dream is that some day of days,
I might discover a Mauritius blue,
poking among the stamp-bins of the quais;
Who knows! They say there are but two;
Yet if a third one I should spy,
I think - God help me! I should faint and die. . . .
Poor Monsieur Pns, he's cold and dead,
One of those stamp-collecting cranks.
His garret held no crust of bread,
But albums worth a million francs.
on them his income he would spend,
By philatelic frenzy driven:
What did it profit in the end. . .
You can't take stamps to Heaven.
Scheme | ABABCC DEDEFF GHGHII JKJKLL MNMNAH OPOPQQ XRBRII DCDCSTST |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1101110101 1101011101 1111011111 1111010101 1111110001 1101110101 1110110111 1111110111 11001111101 11111101011 1011111111 1101111101 11110111001 101101101 110110101 1011100101 0111001111 0101111111 0111110101 111111101 01001110111 11111111001 1011111111 1111010111 1101001111 1101111111 1011011111 1111001111 011101001 0111110111 1101110111 1001010111 1101001101 1100110111 1111110101 01110001 1111111111 11010001001 1001011101 11111111 11011111 1111111101 10111101 11110101 11011111 11010101 1111111 100101010 11110001 1111110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,961 |
Words | 397 |
Sentences | 26 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8 |
Lines Amount | 50 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 190 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 50 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 25, 2023
- 2:01 min read
- 128 Views
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"Stamp Collector" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32451/stamp-collector>.
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