Analysis of Celebates



They must not wed the Doctor said,
      For they were far from strong,
And children of their marriage bed
      Might not live overlong.
And yet each eve I saw them pass
      With rapt and eager air,
As fit a seeming lad and lass
              As ought to pair.

For twenty years I went away
      And scoured the China Sea,
Then homing came and found that they
      Were still sweet company.
The Doctor and the Priest had banned
      Three times their wedding ties,
Yet they were walking hand in hand,
              Love in their eyes.

And then I went away again
      For years another score,
And sailored all the Spanish Main
      Ere I returned once more;
And now I see them pass my gate,
      So slow and stooped and grey,
And when I asked them: "Why not mate?"
              "We do," they say.

"No priest and village bells we need,
      No Doctor to approve;
The Lord has wedded us indeed
      With everlasting love.
How wonderful to understand
      The working of His will!
Lo! We are walking hand in hand,
              And sweethearts still."


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH XIXIJEJE KXKXGLGL
Poetic Form
Metre 11110101 110111 01011101 1111 01111111 110101 11010101 1111 11011101 0100101 11010111 011100 01000111 111101 11010101 1011 01110101 110101 0110101 110111 01111111 110101 01111111 1111 11010111 110101 01110101 10101 1100101 010111 11110101 011
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,050
Words 183
Sentences 11
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 181
Words per stanza (avg) 45
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

54 sec read
62

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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