Analysis of No Sunday Chicken



I could have sold him up because
      His rent was long past due;
And Grimes, my lawyer, said it was
      The proper thing to do:
But how could I be so inhuman?
      And me a gentle-woman.

Yet I am poor as chapel mouse,
      Pinching to make ends meet,
And have to let my little house
      To buy enough to eat:
Why, even now to keep agoing
      I have to take in sewing.

Sylvester is a widowed man,
      Clerk in a hardware store;
I guess he does the best he can
      To feed his kiddies four:
It sure is hard,--don't think it funny,
      I've lately loaned him money.

I want to wipe away a tear
      Even to just suppose
Some monster of an auctioneer
      Might sell his sticks and clothes:
I'd rather want for bread and butter
      Than see them in the gutter.

A silly, soft old thing am I,
      But oh them kiddies four!
I guess I'll make a raisin pie
      And leave it at their door . . .
Some Sunday, dears, you'll share my dream,--
      Fried chicken and ice-cream.


Scheme XAXABB CDCDEE FGFGHH XXXXII JGJGKK
Poetic Form Etheree  (27%)
Metre 11111101 111111 01110111 010111 111111010 0101010 11111101 101111 01111101 110111 1101111 1111010 01010101 10011 11110111 111101 111111110 1101110 11110101 101101 1101101 111101 110111010 1110010 01011111 111101 11110101 011111 1111111 110011
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 972
Words 182
Sentences 11
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 135
Words per stanza (avg) 36
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

56 sec read
49

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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