Analysis of Design



Said Seeker of the skies to me:
"Behold yon starry host ashine!
When Heaven's harmony you see
How can you doubt control divine,
                Law, order and design?"

"Nay, Sire," said I, "I do not doubt
The spheres in cosmic pattern spin;
But what I try to puzzle out
Is that--if Law and Order win
                Where does mere man come in?

"If to the millionth of a hair
Cause and Effect are welded true,
Then there's no leeway anywhere,
And all we do we have to do,
                And sun and atom too."

O Stars, sing in your harmony!
O Constellations raptly shine!
Flout me because I am not free,
Mock me because no choice is mine!
O Beauty, it so hurts to see!
                --O damnable Design!


Scheme ABABB CBCBB DEDEE ABABAB
Poetic Form
Metre 11010111 0111011 11010011 11110101 110001 110111111 01010101 11111101 11110101 111110 11010101 10011101 111110 01111111 010101 11101100 1010101 11011111 11011111 11011111 1101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 710
Words 130
Sentences 10
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 5, 5, 5, 6
Lines Amount 21
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 121
Words per stanza (avg) 31
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

38 sec read
75

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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