Analysis of Frustration



Gazing to gold seraph wing,
With wistful wonder in my eyes,
A blue-behinded ape, I swing
Upon the palms of Paradise.

A parakeet of gaudy hue
Upon a flame tree smugly rocks;
Oh, we're a precious pair, we two,
I gibber while the parrot squawks.

"If I had but your wings," I sigh,
"How ardently would I aspire
To soar celestially high
And mingle with yon angel choir."

His beady eye is bitter hard;
Right mockingly he squints at me;
As critic might review a bard
His scorn is withering to see.

And as I beat my brest and howl,
"Poor fool," he shrills, my bliss to wreck.
So . . . so I steal behind that fowl
And grab his claw and screw his neck.

And swift his scarlet wings I tear;
Seeking to soar, with hope divine,
I frantically beat the air,
And crash to earth and - snap my spine.

Yet as I lie with shaken breaths
Of pain I watch my seraph throng. . . .
Oh, I would die a dozen deaths
Could I but sing one deathless song!


Scheme AXAX BXBX CXCX DEDE FGFG HIHI JKJK
Poetic Form Quatrain  (57%)
Metre 101111 11010011 011111 0101110 0101101 01011101 11010111 1110101 11111111 11001101 1111 010111010 11011101 111111 1101101 11110011 01111101 11111111 11110111 01110111 01110111 10111101 11000101 01110111 11111101 1111111 11110101 1111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 903
Words 183
Sentences 16
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 28
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 99
Words per stanza (avg) 26
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

54 sec read
120

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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