Analysis of Ruins



Ruins in Rome are four a penny,
And here along the Appian Way
I see the monuments of many
Esteemed almighty in their day. . . .
Or so he makes me understand -
My glib guide of the rubber bus,
And tells me with a gesture grand:
"Behold! the tomb of Romulus."

Whereat I stared with eyes of awe,
And yet a whit dismayed was I,
When on its crumbling wall I saw
A washing hanging out to dry;
Yea, that relict of slow decay,
With peristyle and gnarly frieze,
Was garnished with a daft display
Of bifurcation and chemise.

But as we went our Southward way
Another ruin soon I saw;
No antique tower, gaunt and grey,
But modern manor rubbled raw;
And on its sill a maiden sat,
And told me in a tone of rue:
It was your allied bombs did that . . .
But do not think we're blaming you."

Thought I: Time is more kind than we
Who blot out beauty with a blow;
And truly it was sad to see
A gracious mansion levelled low . . .
While moulderings of ancient Rome
Still serve the peasants for their swine,
We do not leave a lovely home
A wall to hang a washing line.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFGFBHBH BGBEIJIJ AKAKLMLM
Poetic Form
Metre 100111010 010101001 110100110 01010011 1111101 11110101 01110101 01011100 1111111 01010111 111100111 01010111 1111101 1100101 11010101 1010001 111110101 01010111 10110101 1101011 01110101 01100111 11101111 11111101 11111111 11110101 01011111 01010101 111101 11010111 11110101 01110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,023
Words 207
Sentences 16
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 199
Words per stanza (avg) 53
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:01 min read
110

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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