The Artist



All day with brow of anxious thought
          The dictionary through,
Amid a million words he sought
          The sole one that would do.
He wandered on from pub to pub
          Yet never ceased to seek
With burning brain and pencil stub
          The Word Unique.

Said he: 'I'll nail it down or die.
          Oh Heaven help me, pray!'
And then a heavy car dashed by,
          And he was in the way.
They rushed him to the hospital,
          And though his chance was bleak,
He cried: 'I'll croak, but find I shall
          The Word Unique.'

They reckoned he was off his head,
          And could be it was so;
For as they bent above his bed
          He mumbled soft and low.
And then a name they heard him speak,
          Yet did not deem it odd . . .
At last he'd found the Word Unique,--
          Just God.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

43 sec read
108

Quick analysis:

Scheme ababcdcD efefxdxD ghghdidi
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 804
Words 145
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…

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    Which of the following is not one of the "three unities"?
    A Unity of character
    B Unity of place
    C Unity of time
    D Unity of action