Analysis of A Song Of Winter Weather



It isn't the foe that we fear;
    It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
    Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
It isn't the snipers who seek
    To nip our young hopes in the bud:
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns --
    It's the MUD,
                    MUD,
                              MUD.

It isn't the melee we mind.
That often is rather good fun.
    It isn't the shrapnel we find
Obtrusive when rained by the ton;
    It isn't the bounce of the bombs
That gives us a positive pain:
    It's the strafing we get
When the weather is wet --
    It's the RAIN,
                      RAIN,
                            RAIN.

It isn't because we lack grit
    We shrink from the horrors of war.
We don't mind the battle a bit;
    In fact that is what we are for;
It isn't the rum-jars and things
    Make us wish we were back in the fold:
It's the fingers that freeze
In the boreal breeze --
    It's the COLD,
                    COLD,
                            COLD.

Oh, the rain, the mud, and the cold,
    The cold, the mud, and the rain;
With weather at zero it's hard for a hero
    From language that's rude to refrain.
With porridgy muck to the knees,
    With sky that's a-pouring a flood,
Sure the worst of our foes
Are the pains and the woes
    Of the RAIN,
                THE COLD,
                        AND THE MUD.


Scheme ababxcddcCC efefxghhgGG ijijxkllkKK kgxglcmmgkc
Poetic Form
Metre 11001111 11001011 11001001 101101101 11001011 111011001 111001 011001 101 1 1 1100111 11011011 11001011 01011101 11001101 11101001 101011 101011 101 1 1 11001111 11101011 11101001 01111111 11001101 111101001 101011 0011 101 1 1 10101001 0101001 110110111010 11011101 111101 11101001 1011101 101001 101 01 001
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,337
Words 232
Sentences 9
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 11, 11, 11, 11
Lines Amount 44
Letters per line (avg) 19
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 207
Words per stanza (avg) 58
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 11, 2023

1:15 min read
209

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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