Analysis of Sentimental Hangman



'Tis hard to hang a husky lad
When larks are in the sky;
It hurts when daffydills are glad
To wring a neck awry,
When joy o' Spring is in the sap
And cheery in the sun,
'Tis sad to string aloft a chap,
No matter what he done.

And sittin' in the pub o' night
I hears that prison bell,
And wonders if it's reely right
To haste a man to hell,

For doin' what he had to do,
Through greed, or lust, or hate . . .
Aye, them seem rightful words to you,
But me, I calls it - Fate.

Lots more would flout the gallows tree,
But that they are afraid;
And so to save society,
I ply my grisly trade.
Yet as I throttle eager breath
And plunge to his hell-home
Some cringin' cove, to me his death
Seems more like martyrdom.

For most o' us have held betime
Foul murder in the heart;
And them sad blokes I swung for crime
Were doomed right from the start.
Of wilful choosing they had none,
For freedom's most a fraud,
And maybe in the end the one
Responsible is - God.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJKLKX LMXMDXDX
Poetic Form
Metre 11110101 111001 111111 110101 11111001 010001 11110101 110111 0100111 111101 0101111 110111 1111111 111111 11110111 111111 11110101 111101 01110100 111101 11110101 011111 1111111 111100 1111111 110001 01111111 011101 1110111 110101 01000101 010011
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 926
Words 194
Sentences 10
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 8, 4, 4, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 143
Words per stanza (avg) 39
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

58 sec read
91

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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