Analysis of Dedication



In youth I longed to paint
     The loveliness I saw;
And yet by dire constraint
     I had to study Law.
But now all that is past,
     And I have no regret,
For I am free at last
          Law to forget.

To beauty newly born
     With brush and tube I play;
And though my daubs you scorn,
     I'll learn to paint some day.
When I am eighty old,
     Maybe I'll better them,
And you may yet behold
          A gem.

Old Renoir used to paint,
     Brush strapped to palsied hand;
His fervour of a saint
     How I can understand.
My joy is my reward,
     And though you gently smile,
Grant me to fumble, Lord,
          A little while!


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH AIAIJKJK
Poetic Form
Metre 011111 0111 011101 111101 111111 011101 111111 1101 110101 110111 011111 111111 111101 101101 011101 01 101111 11111 11101 11101 111101 011101 111101 0101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 621
Words 117
Sentences 7
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 18
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 142
Words per stanza (avg) 38
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

35 sec read
62

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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