Analysis of The Tunnel
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
Toil's a tunnel, there's no way out
For fellows, the like o' me;
A beggar wi' only a crust an' a clout
At the worst o' the worst is free;
but I work to eat, an' I eat to work;
It's always the same old round,
And I dassent fail for the day I shirk
They'll shovel me underground.
I guess God meant it to be that way,
For a man must make his bread;
I was born to bondage, to earn my pay,
To slave to the day I'm dead;
To live in a tunnel, to die in a ditch -
That's just what us fellows do;
For the poor must be makin' the rich more rich,
An' the many must serve the few.
Aye, we live in a tunnel, most o' us,
A-fearin' to lose our job;
But who has the right to gripe an' cuss
So the goblet's hot on the hob.
An' I mustn't be havin' the wife complain,
An' I can't let the childer fast:
So I'll toil in my tunnel an' drag my chain,
Clank! Clank! Clank! to the last.
Scheme | ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJKLKL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Traditional rhyme |
Metre | 10101111 1100111 01011001101 10110111 1111111111 110111 011110111 110110 111111111 1011111 1111101111 1110111 11001011001 1111101 10111100111 10101101 1110010111 0111101 111011111 1011101 1110110101 1111011 11101101111 111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 846 |
Words | 188 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 207 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 62 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 59 sec read
- 88 Views
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