The Law Of Laws



If we could roll back History
       A century, let's say,
And start from there, I'm sure that we
       Would find things as to-day:
In all creation's cosmic range
       No vestige of a change.
       
Turn back a thousand years, the same
       Unchangement we would view;
Cause and Effect their laws proclaim,
       The truest of the true,
And in life's mechanistic groove
       The Universe would move.

Grim is the grip of the Machine
       And everything we do
Designed implacably has been
       Since earth was virgin new:
We strut our parts as they were writ,--
       That's all there is to it.

Curse on such thinking! let us play
       At Free Will, though we be
The gnatlike creatures of the day,
       The dupes of Destiny . . .
The merle is merry in the may--
       Tommorow's time to pray.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
158

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCC DEDEFF XEXEGG BABABB
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 794
Words 135
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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