Henry



Mary and I were twenty-two
          When we were wed;
A well-matched pair, right smart to view
          The town's folk said.
For twenty years I have been true
          To nuptial bed.

But oh alas! The march of time,
          Life's wear and tear!
Now I am in my lusty prime
          With pep to spare,
While she looks ten more years than I'm,
          With greying hair.

'Twas on our trip dear friends among,
          To New Orleans,
A stranger's silly trip of tongue
          Kiboshed my dreams:
I heard her say: 'How very young
          His mother seems.'

Child-bearing gets a woman down,
          And six had she;
Yet now somehow I feel a clown
          When she's with me;
When cuties smile one cannot frown,
          You must agree.

How often I have heard it said:
          'For happy fate,
In age a girl ten years ahead
          Should choose her mate.'
Now twenty years to Mary wed
          I know too late.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

47 sec read
97

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABAB CDCDCD EXEFEF GHGHGH BIBIBI
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 909
Words 156
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 6

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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