Analysis of The Receptionist



France is the fairest land on earth,
          Lovely to heart's desire,
And twice a year I span its girth,
          Its beauty to admire.
But when a pub I seek each night,
          To my profound vexation
On form they hand me I've to write
                    My occupation.

So once in a derisive mood
          My pen I nibbled;
And though I know I never should:
          'Gangster' I scribbled.
But as the clerk with startled face
          Looked stark suspicion,
I blurred it out and in its place
                    Put 'Politician.'

Then suddenly dissolved his frown;
          His face fused to a grin,
As humorously he set down
          The form I handed in.
His shrug was eloquent to view.
          Quoth he: 'What's in a name?
In France, alas! the lousy two
                    Are just the same.'


Scheme AXAXBCBC XDXDECEC CCCCFGFG
Poetic Form
Metre 11010111 1011010 01011111 110101 11011111 11011 11111111 1010 11000101 11110 01111101 10110 11011101 11010 11110011 1010 11000111 111101 11000111 011100 11110011 111001 01010101 1101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 798
Words 132
Sentences 10
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 169
Words per stanza (avg) 43
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 20, 2023

39 sec read
36

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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