Analysis of Brother Jim



My brother Jim's a millionaire,
while I have scarce a penny;
His face is creased with lines of care,
While my mug hasn't any.
With inwardness his eyes are dim,
While mine laugh out in glee,
And though I ought to envy him,
I think he envies me.

He has a chateau, I a shack,
And humble I should be
To see his stately Cadillac
Beside my jalopy.
With chain of gold his belly's girt,
His beard is barber trim;
Yet bristle-chinned with ragged shirt,
I do not envy Jim.

My brother is a man of weight;
For every civic plum
He grabs within one pie of state,
While I am just a bum.
Last Winter he was near to croak
With gastric ulcers grim. . . .
And no! although I'm stony broke
I will not envy Jim

He gets the work, I get the fun;
He has no tie for play;
Whereas with paddle, rod and gun
My life's a holiday.
As over crabbed script he pores
I can the sky's blue rim. . . .
Oh boy! While I have God's outdoors
I'll never envy Jim.


Scheme ABABCBCB DBDBECEC FGFGHCHC IJIJKCKC
Poetic Form
Metre 1101001 1111010 11111111 1111010 111111 111101 01111101 11111 11001101 010111 1111010 011010 1111111 111101 11011101 111101 11010111 1100101 11011111 111101 11011111 110101 0111101 111101 11011101 111111 01110101 11010 1101111 110111 11111111 110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 898
Words 185
Sentences 18
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 173
Words per stanza (avg) 47
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

57 sec read
114

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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