Analysis of The Afflicted



Softly every night they come
          To the picture show,
That old couple, deaf and dumb
          In the second row;
Wistful watching, hand in hand,
          Proud they understand.

Shut-ins from the world away,
          All in all to each;
Knowing utter joy as they
          Read the lips of speech . . .
Would, I wonder, I be glum
          Were I deaf and dumb?

Were I quieted away,
          Far from din and shock?
Were I spared the need to say
          Silly things in talk?
Utter hush I would not mind . . .
          Happy they!--I'm blind.


Scheme ABABCC DEDEAA DXDXFF
Poetic Form
Metre 10100111 10101 1110101 00101 1010101 1101 1110101 10111 1010111 10111 1110111 01101 0110001 11101 0110111 10101 1011111 10111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 545
Words 90
Sentences 13
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 19
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 115
Words per stanza (avg) 31
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

27 sec read
115

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…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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