May Miracle



On this festive first of May,
Wending wistfully my way
Three sad sights I saw today.

The first was such a lovely lad
He lit with grace the sordid street;
Yet in a monk's robe he was clad,
With tonsured head and sandalled feet.
Though handsome as a movie star
His eyes had holiness in them,
As if he saw afaint, afar
A stable-stall in Bethlehem.

The second was a crippled maid
Who gazed and gazed with eager glance
Into a window that displayed
The picture of a ballet dance.
And as she leaned on crutches twain,
Before that poster garland-gay
She looked so longingly and vain
I thought she'd never go away.

The last one was a sightless man
Who to the tune of a guitar
Caught coppers in a dingy can,
Patient and sad as blind men are.
So old and grey and grimy too,
His fingers fumbled on the strings,
As emptily he looked at you,
And sang as only sorrow sings.

Then I went home and had a dream
That seemed fantastical to me...
I saw the youth with eye agleam
Put off his robe and dance with glee.
The maid her crutches threw away;
Her withered limbs seemed shapely fine;
And there the two with radiance gay
Divinely danced in soft entwine:
While the blind man, his sight restored,
Guitared the Glory of the Lord.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:10 min read
35

Quick analysis:

Scheme AAA BCBCDEDE FGFGHAHA IDIDJKJK LMLMANANOO
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,182
Words 232
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 3, 8, 8, 8, 10

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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