Analysis of Hobo



A father's pride I used to know,
A mother's love was mine;
For swinish husks I let them go,
And bedded with the swine.
Since then I've come on evil days
And most of life is hell;
But even swine have winsome ways
When once you know them well.

One time I guessed I'd cease to roam,
And greet the folks again;
And so I rode the rods to home
And through the window pane
I saw them weary, worn and grey . . .
I gazed from the garden gloom,
And like sweet, shiny saints were they
Int taht sweet, shiny room.

D'ye think I hollored out: "Hullo!"
The prodigal to play,
And eat the fatted calf? Ah no,
I cursed and ran away.
My eyes were blears of whisky tears
As to a pub I ran:
But once at least I beat the beast
And proved myself a man.

Oh, some day I am going back,
But I'll have gold galore;
I'll wear a suit of sobber black
And knock upon the door.
I'l tell them how I've made a stake,
We'll have the grandest time. . . .
"Say, Mister, give a guy a break:
For Chrissake, spare a dime."


Scheme ABABCDCD EXEXFGFG DFAFXHXH IJIJKLKL
Poetic Form
Metre 01011111 010111 1111111 010101 11111101 011111 11011101 111111 11111111 010101 01110111 010101 11110101 1110101 01110101 111101 1111111 010011 0101111 110101 11011101 110111 11111101 01101 11111101 111101 1101111 010101 111111101 110101 11010101 11101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 958
Words 201
Sentences 17
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 182
Words per stanza (avg) 51
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 02, 2023

1:02 min read
51

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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    "Hobo" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32170/hobo>.

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