Analysis of Bed Sitter
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
He stared at me with sad, hurt eyes,
That drab, untidy man;
And though my clients I despise
I do the best I can
To comfort them with cheerful chat;
(Quite comme il faut, of course)
And furnish evidence so that
Their wives may claim divorce.
But as this chap sobbed out his woes
I thought: How it's a shame!
His wife's a bitch and so he goes
And takes himself the blame.
And me behaving like a heel
To earn a filthy fee . . .
Said I: "You've had a dirty deal."
"What of yourself? said he.
And so I told him how I was
A widow of the war,
And doing what I did because
Two sons I struggled for.
As I sat knitting through the night
He eyed me from the bed,
And in the rosy morning light
Impulsively he said:
"Through in this sordid game we play,
To cheat the law we plan,
i do believe you when you say
You hold aloof from man;
Unto the dead you have been true,
And on the day I'm free,
To prove how I have faith in you -
Please, will you marry me?"
That's how it was. Now we are wed,
And life's a list of joys.
The old unhappy past is dead;
He's father to my boys.
And I have told him just to-day,
(Though forty, I confess,)
A little sister's on the way
To crown our happiness.
Scheme | ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH XIXIJKJK LBLBMHMH KNKNLXLX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (28%) Tetractys (23%) |
Metre | 11111111 110101 01110101 110111 11011101 111111 01010011 111101 11111111 111101 11010111 010101 01010101 110101 11110101 110111 01111111 010101 01011101 111101 11110101 111101 00010101 010011 10110111 110111 11011111 110111 10011111 010111 11111101 111101 11111111 010111 01010111 110111 01111111 110101 01010101 1110100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,145 |
Words | 245 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 175 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 121 Views
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"Bed Sitter" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32007/bed-sitter>.
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