The Visionary



If fortune had not granted me
      To suck the Muse's teats,
I think I would have liked to be
      A sweeper of the streets;
And city gutters glad to groom,
      Have heft a bonny broom.
      
There--as amid the crass and crush
      The limousines swished by,
I would have leaned upon my brush
      With visionary eye:
Deeming despite their loud allure
      That I was rich, they poor.

Aye, though in garb terrestrial,
      To Heaven I would pray,
And dream with broom celestial
      I swept the Milky Way;
And golden chariots would ring,
      And harps of Heaven sing.

And all the strumpets passing me,
      And heelers of the Ward
Would glorified Madonnas be,
      And angels of the Lord;
And all the brats in gutters grim
      Be rosy cherubim.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

38 sec read
107

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCC DEDEXX FGFGHH AIAIXA
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 744
Words 128
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 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…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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