Poor Kid



Mumsie and Dad are raven dark
          And I am lily blonde.
''Tis strange,' I once heard nurse remark,
          'You do not correspond.'
And yet they claim me as their own,
          Born of their flesh and bone.

To doubt their parenthood I dread,
          But now to girlhood grown,
The thought is haunting in my head
          That I am not their own:
If so, my radiant bloom of youth
          Would wither in the truth.

'Twould give me anguish deep to know
          A fondling babe was I;
And that a maid in wedless woe
          Left me to live or die:
I'd rather Mother lied and lied
          To save my pride.

I love them both and they love me;
          I am their all, they say.
Yet though the sweetest home have we,
          To know I'm theirs I pray.
If not, please dear ones, never tell . . .
          The truth would be of hell.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
86

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCC DCDCEE FGFGHH IJIJKK
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 834
Words 151
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6

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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