Analysis of The Answer



Bill has left his house of clay,
Slammed the door and gone away:
How he laughed but yesterday!

I had two new jokes to tell,
Salty, but he loved them well:
Now I see his empty shell.

Poker-faced he looks at me;
Peeved to miss them jokes - how h
Would have belly-laughed with glee!

He gives me the pip, I swear;
Seems just like he isn't there:
Flown the coop - I wonder where?

Bill had no belief in "soul";
Thought the body was the whole,
And the grave the final goal.

Didn't reckon when we pass,
This old carcass maybe has
Spirit that sneaks out like gas.

"Look here, Bill, I'm asking you
What's the Answer? Tell me true:
Is death the end of all we do?

"Hand me out the dope - are we
No more than monkeys on a tree?"
... And then I swear to God I see
bill bat an eye and - wink at me.


Scheme AAA BBB CXC DDD EEE FXF GGG CCCC
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111 1010101 111110 1111111 1011111 1111101 1011111 1111111 1110111 1110111 1111101 1011101 1110101 1010101 0010101 1010111 1110101 1011111 1111101 1010111 11011111 1110111 11110101 01111111 11110111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 767
Words 164
Sentences 12
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4
Lines Amount 25
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 72
Words per stanza (avg) 20
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

50 sec read
122

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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