Analysis of Premonition



'Twas a year ago and the moon was bright
    (Oh, I remember so well, so well);
I walked with my love in a sea of light,
    And the voice of my sweet was a silver bell.
        And sudden the moon grew strangely dull,
            And sudden my love had taken wing;
        I looked on the face of a grinning skull,
            I strained to my heart a ghastly thing.

'Twas but fantasy, for my love lay still
    In my arms, with her tender eyes aglow,
And she wondered why my lips were chill,
    Why I was silent and kissed her so.
        A year has gone and the moon is bright,
            A gibbous moon, like a ghost of woe;
        I sit by a new-made grave to-night,
            And my heart is broken -- it's strange, you know.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFAFAF
Poetic Form
Metre 1010100111 110101111 1111100111 00111110101 010011101 010111101 1110110101 111110101 1110011111 0111010101 011011101 111100101 011100111 01110111 111011111 0111101111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 729
Words 135
Sentences 5
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 8
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 30
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 240
Words per stanza (avg) 67
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
86

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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