Analysis of The Bliss Of Ignorance



When Jack took Nell into his arms
He knew he acted ill,
And thought as he enjoyed her charms
Of his fiancée Jill.
"Poor dear," he sighed, "she dreams of me,
I shouldn't act like this;
But after all, she cannot see,
And ignorance is bliss."

Yet Jill at that same moment was
In Fred's embrace close caught,
And just a little sad because
Of sweetheart Jack she thought.
"Poor dear," she sighed, "he loves me so,
And what's a little kiss?
Or two or three - he'll never know,
And ignorance is bliss."

Now in fond wedlock all is well,
Though in their nuptial bed,
Jack's thought will sometimes stray to Nell,
And Jill's to handsome Fred.
Yet though in fancy they may flirt,
There's nothing much amiss:
What they don't know will never hurt -
Aye, Ignorance Is Bliss.


Scheme ababcdcD xxxxedeD fgfghdhd
Poetic Form
Metre 11110111 111101 01110101 11111 11111111 110111 11011101 010011 11111101 010111 01010101 11111 11111111 010101 11111101 010011 1011111 101101 11101111 011101 11010111 110101 11111101 110011
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 745
Words 147
Sentences 8
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 192
Words per stanza (avg) 47
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 30, 2023

45 sec read
134

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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