Analysis of Rover's Rest



By parents I would not be pinned,
        Nor in my home abide,
For I was wanton as the wind
        And tameless as the tide;
So scornful of domestic hearth,
        And bordered garden path,
I sought the wilder ways of earth,
        The roads of wrath.

It scares me now to think of how
        Foolhardily I fared;
Though mighty scarred of pelt and pow
        A dozen deaths I've dared;
Yet there are trails I would explore,
        And wilds that for me wait . . .
Alas! I'll wander nevermore,--
        The hour's too late.

The folks are at my picture show,
        I smoke my pipe and sigh.
Soft-slippered by the ember's glow
        A baby-sitter I.
Behold! In dressing-gown of mauve,
        To comfort reconciled,
A rover rocks the cradle of
        His new grand-child.


Scheme XAXAXBXB CDCDEFEF GHGHXIXI
Poetic Form
Metre 11011111 101101 11110101 01101 11010101 010101 11010111 0111 11111111 111 11011101 010111 11111101 011111 0111010 01011 01111101 111101 111011 010101 01010111 11010 01010101 1111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 773
Words 129
Sentences 11
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 174
Words per stanza (avg) 43
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

39 sec read
105

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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