Property



The red-roofed house of dream design
       Looks three ways on the sea;
For fifty years I've made it mine,
       And held it part of me.
The pines I planted in my youth
       Triumpantly are tall . . .
Yet now I know with sorry sooth
       I have to leave it all.
       
Hard-hewn from out the living rock
       And salty from the tide,
My house has braved the tempest shock
       With hardihood and pride.
Each nook is memoried to me;
       I've loved its every stone,
And cried to it exultantly:
       "My own, my very own!"

Poor fool! To think that I possess.
       I have but cannot hold;
And all that's mine is less and less
       My own as I grow old.
My home shall ring with childish cheers
       When I shall leave it lone;
My house will bide a hundred years
       When I am in the bone.

Alas! No thing can be my own:
       At most a life-long lease
Is all I hold, a little loan
       From Time, that soon will cease.
For now by faint and failing breath
       I feel that I must go . . .
Old House! You've never known a death,--
       Well, now's your hour to know.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

1:00 min read
116

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFBGBG HIHIJGJG GKGKLMLM
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,066
Words 198
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 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…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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