Analysis of Weary Waitress



Her smile ineffably is sweet,
        Devinely she is slim;
Yet oh how weary are her feet,
        How aches her every limb!
Thank God it's near to closing time,
        --Merciful midnight chime.

Then in her mackintosh she'll go
        Up seven flights of stairs,
And on her bed her body throw,
        Too tired to say her prayers;
Yet not too sleepy to forget
        Her cheap alarm to set.

She dreams . . . That lonely bank-clerk boy
        Who comes each day for tea,--
Oh how his eyes light up with joy
        Her comeliness to see!
And yet he is too shy to speak,
        Far less to touch her cheek.

He dreams . . . If only I were King
        I'd make of her my Queen.
If I were laureate I'd sing
        Her loveliness serene.
--How wistfully romance can haunt
        A city restaurant!

For as I watch that pensive pair
        There stirs within my heart
From Arcady an April air
        That shames the sordid mart:
A sense of Spring and singing rills,
                --Love mid the daffodils.


Scheme ABABCC DEDEFF GHGHII JKJKXX LMLMEX
Poetic Form Etheree  (30%)
Metre 01111 1111 11110101 1101001 11111101 10011 1001011 110111 01010101 1101101 11110101 010111 11110111 111111 11111111 0111 01111111 111101 11110101 111011 11010011 0101 11000111 01010 11111101 110111 111101 110101 01110101 11010
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 998
Words 170
Sentences 16
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 134
Words per stanza (avg) 35
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

52 sec read
100

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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