Analysis of The Widower



Oh I have worn my mourning out,
And on her grave the green grass grows;
So I will hang each sorry clout
High in the corn to scare the crows.
And I will buy a peacock tie,
And coat of cloth of Donegal;
Then to the Farmer's Fair I'll hie
And peek in at the Barley Ball.

But though the fiddlers saw a jig
I used to foot when I was wed,
I'll walk me home and feed the pig,
And go a lonesome man to bed.

So I will wait another year,
As any decent chap would do,
Till I can think without a tear
Of her whose eyes were cornflower blue.

Then to the Harvest Ball I'll hie,
And I will wear a flower-sprigged vest;
For Maggie has a nut-brown eyes,
And we will foot it with the best.

And if kind-minded she should be
To wife me - 'tis the will if God . . .
But Oh the broken heart f me
For her who lies below the sod!


Scheme ABABXCDC EFEF XXXC DGXG HIHI
Poetic Form
Metre 11111101 01010111 11111101 10011101 0111011 011111 11010111 01010101 110100101 11111111 11110101 01010111 11110101 11010111 11110101 10110101 11010111 011101011 11010111 01111101 01110111 11110111 11010111 10110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 790
Words 172
Sentences 10
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 8, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 121
Words per stanza (avg) 35
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

52 sec read
41

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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