Our Daily Bread



"Give me my daily bread.
It seems so odd,
When all is done and said,
This plea to God.
To pray for cake might be
The thing to do;
But bread, it seems to me,
Is just our due.

"Give me my daily toil,"
I ought to say -
(If from life's cursed coil
I'd time to pray.)
Give me my daily sweat,
My body sore,
So that bread I may get
To toil for more.

"Give me my daily breath,"
Through half a sob,
Until untimely death
Shall end my job.
A crust for my award,
I cry in dread:

"Grant unto me. Oh Lord,
My daily bread!"

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 15, 2023

34 sec read
139

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJKA KA
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 493
Words 115
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 6, 2

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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