Analysis of Florrie



Because I was a wonton wild
     And welcomed many a lover,
Who is the father of my child
     I wish I could discover.
For though I know it is not right
     In tender arms to tarry,
A barmaid has to be polite
     To Tom and Dick and Harry.

My truest love was Poacher Jim:
     I wish my babe was his'n.
Yet I can't father it on him
     Because he was in prison.
As uniforms I like, I had
     A soldier and a sailor;
Then there was Pete the painter lad,
     And Timothy the tailor.

Though virtue hurt you vice ain't nice;
     They say to err is human;
Alas! one pays a bitter price,
     It's hell to be a woman.
Oh dear! Why was I born a lass
     Who hated to say: No, sir.
I'd better in my sorry pass
     Blame Mister Simms, the grocer.


Scheme ABABCDCD EXEFGBGB HFHFIBIB
Poetic Form
Metre 0111011 01010010 11010111 1111010 11111111 0101110 0111101 1101010 11011101 1111111 11110111 0111010 1101111 0100010 11110101 0100010 11011111 1111110 01110101 1111010 11111101 1101111 11001101 1101010
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 731
Words 146
Sentences 11
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 172
Words per stanza (avg) 48
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
47

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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