Analysis of Tourist



'Twas in a village in Lorraine
     Whose name I quite forget,
I found I needfully was fain
     To buy a serviette.
I sought a shop wherein they sell
     Such articles as these,
And told a smiling mademoiselle;
     'I want a towel, please.'

'Of kinds,' said she, 'I've only two,'
     And took the bundles down;
And one was coloured azure blue,
     And one was khaki brown.
With doubt I scratched my hoary head;
     The quality was right;
The size too, yet I gravely said:
     'Too bad you haven't white.'

That pretty maid had sunny hair,
     Her gaze was free from guile,
And while I hesitated there
     She watched me with a smile.
Then as I went to take the blue
     She said 'Non' meaning no.
'Ze khaki ones are best, M'sieu:
     Ze dirts zey do not show.'


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJEKDK
Poetic Form
Metre 10010001 111101 111111 1101 11010111 110011 01010001 110101 11111101 010101 01110101 011101 11111101 010011 01111101 111101 11011101 011111 0111001 111101 11111101 111101 1101111 111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 755
Words 143
Sentences 8
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 178
Words per stanza (avg) 45
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
76

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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