Analysis of Babette



My Lady is dancing so lightly,
The belle of the Embassy Ball;
I lied as I kissed her politely,
And hurried away from it all.
I'm taxiing up to Montmartre,
With never a pang of regret,
To toy for awhile with the garter
Of her whom I know as Babette.

My Lady's an exquisite creature,
As rare as a queen on a throne;
She's faultless in form and in feature,
But oh, she      is cold as a stone.
And so from her presence I hurry,
Her iciness quick to forget
In sensuous joy as I bury
My face in the breast of Babette.

She's only a flower of the pavement;
With Paris and Spring in her eyes;
Yet I who foresaw what the grave meant
Of passion behold with surprise,
When she greets me as gay as a linnet,
Afar from life's fever and fret
I'm twenty years younger the minute
I enter the room of Babette.

The poor little supper she offers
Is more than a banquet to me;
A different bif-tik she proffers,
Pommes frit and a morsel of Brie;
We finish with coffee and kisses,
Then sit on the sofa and pet . . .
At the Embassy Mumm never misses,
But pinard's my drink with Babette.

Somehow and somewhere to my thinking,
There's a bit of apache in us all;
In bistros I'd rather be drinking,
Than dance at the Embassy Ball.
How often I feel I would barter
My place in the social set,
To roam in a moonlit Montmartre,
Alone with my little Babette.

I'm no longer young and I'm greying;
I'm tailored, top-hatted, kid-gloved,
And though in dark ways i be straying,
It's heaven to love and beloved;
The passion of youth to re-capture. . . .
My Lady's perfection and yet
When I kiss her I think of the rapture
I find in the charms of Babette -
Entwined in the arms of Babettte.


Scheme ABABCDED EFEFADAD XGXGXDXD XAGAHDHD IBIBEDCD IJIJEDEDD
Poetic Form
Metre 110110110 01101001 111110010 01001111 11001110 11001101 111011010 10111101 110110010 11101101 11010010 11111101 011010110 011101 010011110 11001101 1100101010 11001001 11111011 11001101 1111111010 01111001 110110010 11001101 011010110 11101011 01001111 11001011 110110010 11101001 1010011010 1111101 1011110 1011010011 01110110 11101001 110111110 1100101 1100110 01111001 111010110 1101111 010111110 11011001 010111110 11001001 1110111010 11001101 0100111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,611
Words 318
Sentences 17
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9
Lines Amount 49
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 210
Words per stanza (avg) 55
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:39 min read
244

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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