Analysis of A Pot Of Tea



You make it in your mess-tin by the brazier's rosy gleam;
    You watch it cloud, then settle amber clear;
You lift it with your bay'nit, and you sniff the fragrant steam;
    The very breath of it is ripe with cheer.
You're awful cold and dirty, and a-cursin' of your lot;
    You scoff the blushin' 'alf of it, so rich and rippin' 'ot;
It bucks you up like anythink, just seems to touch the spot:
    God bless the man that first discovered Tea!

Since I came out to fight in France, which ain't the other day,
    I think I've drunk enough to float a barge;
All kinds of fancy foreign dope, from caffy and doo lay,
    To rum they serves you out before a charge.
In back rooms of estaminays I've gurgled pints of cham;
    I've swilled down mugs of cider till I've felt a bloomin' dam;
But 'struth! they all ain't in it with the vintage of Assam:
    God bless the man that first invented Tea!

I think them lazy lumps o' gods wot kips on asphodel
    Swigs nectar that's a flavour of Oolong;
I only wish them sons o' guns a-grillin' down in 'ell
    Could 'ave their daily ration of Suchong.
Hurrah! I'm off to battle, which is 'ell and 'eaven too;
    And if I don't give some poor bloke a sexton's job to do,
To-night, by Fritz's campfire, won't I 'ave a gorgeous brew
    (For fightin' mustn't interfere with Tea).
To-night we'll all be tellin' of the Boches that we slew,
    As we drink the giddy victory in Tea.


Scheme ABABCXCD EFEFGGAD HIHIJJJDHD
Poetic Form
Metre 1110111101101 1111110101 11111110110101 0101111111 1101010001111 110111111011 111111111101 1101110101 11111101110101 1111011101 1111010111011 1111110101 0111111111 1111110111011 1111101101011 1101110101 111101111111 110101110 1101111101101 111101011 0111110111011 0111111101111 1111101110101 11100111 1111111010111 11101010001
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,402
Words 263
Sentences 10
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 10
Lines Amount 26
Letters per line (avg) 40
Words per line (avg) 10
Letters per stanza (avg) 344
Words per stanza (avg) 87
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 10, 2023

1:24 min read
121

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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