Our Pote



A pote is sure a goofy guy;
He ain't got guts like you or I
        To tell the score;
He ain't goy gumption 'nuff to know
The game of life's to get the dough,
        Then get some more.
Take Brother Bill, he used to be
The big shot of the family,
        The first at school;
But since about a year ago,
Through readin' Longfeller and Poe,
        He's most a fool.

He mopes around with dimwit stare;
You might as well jest not be there,
        The way he looks;
You'd think he shuns the human race,
The how he buries down his face
        In highbrow books.
I've seen him stand for near an hour,
Jest starin' at a simple flower -
        Sich waste o' time;
The scribblin' on an envelope . . .
Why, most of all his silly dope
        Don't even rhyme.

Now Brother's Jim's an engineer,
And Brother Tim's a bank cashier,
        While I keep store;
Yet Bill, the brightest of the flock,
Might be a lawyer or a doc,
    And then some more.
But no, he moons and loafs about,
As if he tried to figger out
        Why skies are blue;
Instead o' gittin' down to grips
Wi' life an' stackin' up the chips
        Like me an' you.

*   *   *   *   *  *   *   *   *   *

Well, since them final lines I wrote,
We're mournin' for our Brother Pote:
    Bill crossed the sea
And solved his problem with the beat,
For now he lies in peace and rest
    In Normandie.
He died the bravest of the brave,
And here I'm standin' by his grave
        So far from home;
With just a wooden cross to tell
How in the blaze of battle hell
As gloriously there he fell -
        Bill wrote his "pome".

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:32 min read
81

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABCCBDDECCE FFGHHGIIJKKJ LLBMMBNNOPPO QQDXXDRRXSSSJ
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,531
Words 295
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 12, 12, 12, 1, 13

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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