Analysis of Vanity



My tangoing seemed to delight her;
With me it was love at first sight.
I mentioned That I was a writer:
She asked me: "What is it you write?"
"Oh, only best-sellers," I told her.
Their titles? . . . She shook her blonde head;
The atmosphere seemed  to grow colder:
Not one of my books had she read.

Oh, she was a beauty ensnaring,
And I was an author of note;
But little I saw she'd be caring
If never a novel I wrote.
Alas for the caprice of Cupid!
Alack for the phantom of Fame!
I thought her just homely and stupid:
She didn't know even my name.

I saw her a score of years after;
She gushed as I took off my hat;
But inwardly loud was my laughter,
For she was enormously fat.
Thank heaven I'd not made that error;
I saw Love drive off in a hearse;
But I too retreated in terror . . .
She started to quote me my verse.


Scheme ABABACAC DEDEXFXF AGAGAHAH
Poetic Form
Metre 1111010 11111111 110111010 11111111 110110110 11011011 01011110 11111111 1110101 01111011 110111110 11001011 011001110 1101011 110110010 11011011 110011110 11111111 110011110 11101001 110111110 11111001 111010010 11011111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 805
Words 166
Sentences 18
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 204
Words per stanza (avg) 56
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

50 sec read
60

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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