Analysis of Titine

Robert William Service 1874 – 1958



Although I have a car of class,
         A limousine,
I also have a jenny ass
         I call Titine.
And if I had in sober sense
         To choose between,
I know I'd give the preference
         To sleek Titine.

My chauffeur drives my Cadillac
         In uniform.
I wear a worn coat on my back
         That he would scorn.
He speeds with umpty equine power,
         Like an express;
I amble at eight miles an hour,
         Or even less.

My wife can use our fancy bus
         To cut a dash;
She very definitely does,
         And blows my cash.
But this old codger seeks the sane
         And simple scene;
Content to jog along a lane
         With old Titine.

So as in country ways I go
         Wife loves the town;
But though I'm slow, serene I know
         I won't break down.
With brawn and bone I reckon mine
         The best machine:
Old folks and donkeys best combine,
         --"Giddup, Titine!"


Scheme ABABXBXB CXCXDEDE XFXFGBGB HIHIJBJB
Poetic Form
Metre 1110111 010 11010101 111 01110101 1101 11110100 111 1011110 010 11011111 1111 1111110 1101 110111110 1101 111110101 1101 11010001 0111 1111101 0101 10110101 111 11010111 1101 11110111 1111 11011101 0101 11010110 11
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 900
Words 156
Sentences 10
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 18
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 147
Words per stanza (avg) 38
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

47 sec read
55

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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