Four-Foot Shelf

Robert William Service 1874 – 1958



'Come, see,' said he, 'my four-foot shelf,
          A forty volume row;
And every one I wrote myself,
          But that, of course, you know.'
I stared, I searched a memory dim,
          For though an author too,
Somehow I'd never heard of him,--
          None of his books I knew.

Said I: 'I'd like to borrow one,
          Fond memories to recall.'
Said he: 'I'll gladly give you some,
          And autograph them all.'
And so a dozen books he brought,
          And signed tome after tome:
Of course I thanked him quite a lot,
          And took them home.

So now I have to read his work,
          Though dry as dust it be;
No portion of it may I shirk,
          Lest he should question me.
This tale is true,--although it looks
          To me a bloody shame,
A guy could father forty books,
          yet no one know his name.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
100

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCD XEXEXFXF GHGHIJIJ
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 823
Words 150
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8

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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