Analysis of Grand-Père

Robert William Service 1874 – 1958



And so when he reached my bed
    The General made a stand:
"My brave young fellow," he said,
        "I would shake your hand."

So I lifted my arm, the right,
    With never a hand at all;
Only a stump, a sight
        Fit to appal.

"Well, well. Now that's too bad!
    That's sorrowful luck," he said;
"But there! You give me, my lad,
        The left instead."

So from under the blanket's rim
    I raised and showed him the other,
A snag as ugly and grim
        As its ugly brother.

He looked at each jagged wrist;
    He looked, but he did not speak;
And then he bent down and kissed
        Me on either cheek.

You wonder now I don't mind
    I hadn't a hand to offer. . . .
They tell me (you know I'm blind)
        'Twas Grand-Père Joffre.


Scheme ABAB CDCD EAEA FGFG HIHI JGJG
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 0111111 0100101 1111011 11111 11101101 1100111 100101 111 111111 1100111 1111111 0101 1110011 11011010 0111001 111010 111111 1111111 0111101 11101 1101111 11001110 1111111 11111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 734
Words 140
Sentences 14
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 82
Words per stanza (avg) 23
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
36

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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