Analysis of A Verseman's Apology



Alas! I am only a rhymer,
I don't know the meaning of Art;
But I learned in my little school primer
To love Eugene Field and Bret Harte.
I hailed Hoosier Ryley with pleasure,
To John Hay I took off my hat;
These fellows were right to my measure,
And I've never gone higher than that.

The Classics! Well, most of them bore me,
The Moderns I don't understand;
But I keep Burns, my kinsman before me,
And Kipling, my friend, is at hand.
They taught me my trade as I know it,
Yet though at their feet I have sat,
For God-sake don't call me a poet,
For I've never been guilty of that.

A rhyme-rustler, rugged and shameless,
A Bab Balladeer on the loose;
Of saccarine sonnets I'm blameless,
My  model has been - Mother Goose.
And I fancy my grave-digger griping
As he gives my last lodging a pat:
"This guy wrote McGrew;
'Twas the best he could do" . . .
So I'll go to my maker with that.


Scheme ABABACAC DEDEXCXC FGFGXCHHC
Poetic Form Tetractys  (28%)
Metre 011110010 11101011 1110110110 11011011 111010110 11111111 110011110 011011011 010111111 0101101 111111011 01011111 111111111 11111111 111111010 111011011 011010010 011101 1110110 11011101 0110111010 111111001 11101 101111 111111011
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 866
Words 172
Sentences 12
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 9
Lines Amount 25
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 221
Words per stanza (avg) 58
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

53 sec read
42

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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