Belated Conscience



To buy for school a copy-book
          I asked my Dad for two-pence;
He gave it with a gentle look,
          Although he had but few pence.
'Twas then I proved myself a crook
          And came a moral cropper,
I bought a penny copy-book
          And blued the other copper.

I spent it on a sausage roll
          Gulped down with guilt suggestion,
To the damnation of my soul
          And awful indigestion.
Poor Dad! His job was hard to hold;
          His mouths to feed were many;
Were he alive a millionfold
          I'd pay him for his penny.

Now nigh the grave I think with grief,
          Though other sins are many,
I am a liar and a thief
          'Cause once I stole a penny:
Yet be he pious as a friar
          It is my firm believing,
That every man has been a liar
          And most of us done thieving.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
104

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABACAC DEDEFGFG HGHGCICI
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 811
Words 146
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8

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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