Analysis of The Search



I bought a young and lovely bride,
          Paying her father gold;
Lamblike she rested by my side,
          As cold as ice is cold.
No love in her could I awake,
          Even for pity's sake.

I bought rich books I could not read,
          And pictures proud and rare;
Reproachfully they seemed to plead
          And hunger for my care;
But to their beauty I was blind,
          Even as is a hind.

The bearded merchants heard my cry:
          'I'll give all I posses
If only, only I can buy
          A little happiness.'
Alas! I sought without avail:
          They had not that for sale.

I gave my riches to the poor
          And dared the desert lone;
Now of God's heaven I am sure
          Though I am rag and bone . . .
Aye, richer than the Aga Khan,
          At last--a happy man.


Scheme ABABCC XDXDEE FXFXGG XHXHXX
Poetic Form
Metre 11010101 100101 1110111 111111 11001101 10111 11111111 010101 11111 010111 11110111 101101 01010111 111110 11010111 010100 01110101 111111 11110101 010101 11110111 111101 11010101 110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 782
Words 138
Sentences 11
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 127
Words per stanza (avg) 35
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
101

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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