Segregation



I stood beside the silken rope,
      Five dollars in my hand,
And waited in my patient hope
      To sit anear the Band,
And hear the famous Louie play
      The best hot trumpet of today.
      
And then a waiter loafing near
      Says in a nasty tone:
"Old coon, we don't want darkies here,
      Beat it before you're thrown."
So knowin' nothin' I could do
      I turned to go and--there was Lou.

I think he slapped that Dago's face;
      His voice was big an' loud;
An' then he leads me from my place
      Through all that tony crowd.
World-famous Louie by the hand
      Took me to meet his famous Band.

"Listen, you folks," I heard him say.
      "Here's Grand-papa what's come.
Savin' he teached me how to play,
      I mighta been a bum.
Come on, Grand-pop, git up an' show
      How you kin trumpet Ol' Black Joe."

Tremblin' I played before his Band:
      You should have heard the cheers.
Them swell folks gave me such a hand
      My cheeks was wet wi' tears . . .
An' now I'm off to tell the wife
      The proudest night o' all ma life.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

58 sec read
78

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCC XDXDEE FGFGBB CHCHII BXBXJJ
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,033
Words 191
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 6, 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…

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