Analysis of The Damned



My days are haunted by the thought
Of men in coils of Justice caught
With stone and steel, in chain and cell,
Of men condemned to living hell,--
                      Yet blame them not.

In my sun-joy their dark I see:
For what they are and had to be
Blame Nature, red in tooth and claw,
Blame laws beyond all human law,
                      --Blame Destiny.

Behind blind walls I see them go,
Grim spectres of eternal woe,
Drained grey of hope, dead souls of self-slain,--
And yet I know with pang of pain
                      It must be so.

I know that brother's blood they've spilt,
And sons of Cain must pay their guilt;
I know the deviltries that stem
From dark abyss we must condemn;
I know that but for heaven's grace
We might be rotting in their place:
                      --God pity them!


Scheme XABBA CCDDC EEFFE GGHHIIH
Poetic Form
Metre 11110101 11011101 11010101 11011101 1111 01111111 11110111 11010101 11011101 1100 01111111 1110101 111111111 01111111 1111 11110111 01111111 110111 11011101 11111101 11110011 1101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 809
Words 142
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 5, 5, 5, 7
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 136
Words per stanza (avg) 35
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

43 sec read
72

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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