Analysis of Finnigan's Finish

Robert William Service 1874 – 1958



They thought I'd be a champion;
     They boasted loud of me.
A dozen victories I'd won,
     The Press was proud of me.
I saw myself with glory crowned,
     And would, beyond a doubt,
Till last night in the second round
     A Dago knocked me out.

It must have been an accident;
     I cannot understand.
For I was so damn confident
     I'd lick him with one hand.
I bounded in the ring to cheers;
     I panted for the fray:
Ten minutes more with hoots and jeers
     They bore me limp away.

I will not have the nerve to face
     The sporting mob today;
The doll I fell for--my disgrace
     Will feel and fade away.
Last night upon the brink of fame
     No favour did I lack:
Tomorrow from the sink of shame
     I'll beg my old job back.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFXGXG HGHGIJIJ
Poetic Form
Metre 11110100 110111 01010011 011111 1111101 010101 11100101 01111 11111100 11001 11111100 111111 11000111 110101 11011101 111101 11110111 010101 01111101 110101 11010111 11111 0110111 111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 730
Words 139
Sentences 9
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 175
Words per stanza (avg) 46
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 19, 2023

42 sec read
131

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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