Analysis of The Shorter Catechism
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
I burned my fingers on the stove
And wept with bitterness;
But poor old Auntie Maggie strove
To comfort my distress.
Said she: 'Think, lassie, how you'll burn
Like any wicked besom
In fires of hell if you don't learn
Your Shorter Catechism.'
A man's chief end is it began,
(No mention of a woman's),
To glorify--I think it ran,
The God who made poor humans.
And as I learned, I thought: if this--
(My distaste growing stronger),
The Shorter Catechism is,
Lord save us from the longer.
The years have passed and I begin
(Although I'm far from clever),
To doubt if when we die in sin
Our bodies grill forever.
Now I've more surface space to burn,
Since I am tall and lissom,
I think it's hell enough to learn
The Shorter Catechism.
Scheme | AXAXBCBC DEDEXFXF GFGFBCBC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110101 011100 11110101 110101 11110111 110101 010111111 110100 01111101 1101010 1101111 0111110 01111111 1011010 0101001 1111010 01110101 111110 11111101 10101010 11110111 111101 11110111 010100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 834 |
Words | 138 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 185 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 43 sec read
- 47 Views
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"The Shorter Catechism" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32644/the-shorter-catechism>.
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