Analysis of The Goat And I



Each sunny day upon my way
          A goat I pass;
He has a beard of silver grey,
          A bell of brass.
And all the while I am in sight
          He seems to muse,
And stares at me with all his might
          And chews and chews.

Upon the hill so thymy sweet
          With joy of Spring,
He hails me with a tiny bleat
          Of welcoming.
Though half the globe is drenched with blood
          And cities flare,
Contentedly he chews the cud
          And does not care.

Oh gentle friend, I know not what
          Your age may be,
But of my years I'd give the lot
          Yet left to me,
To chew a thistle and not choke,
          But bright of eye
Gaze at the old world-weary bloke
          Who hobbles by.

Alas! though bards make verse sublime,
          And lines to quote,
It takes a fool like me to rhyme
          About a goat.


Scheme ABABCDCD XECEXFCF XGXGHIHI JKJK
Poetic Form
Metre 11010111 0111 11011101 0111 01011101 1111 01111111 0101 0101111 1111 11110101 1100 11011111 0101 01001101 0111 11011111 1111 11111101 1111 11010011 1111 11011101 1101 01111101 0111 11011111 0101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 828
Words 150
Sentences 8
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 4
Lines Amount 28
Letters per line (avg) 19
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 135
Words per stanza (avg) 37
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
87

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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