Analysis of Charity



The Princess was of ancient line,
      Of royal race was she;
Like cameo her face was fine,
      With sad serentiy:
Yet bent she toiled with dimming eye,
      Her rice and milk to buy.

With lacework that for pity plead,
      So out of date it seemed,
She sought to make her daily bread,
      As of her past she dreamed:
And though sometimes I heard her sigh,
      I never knew her cry.

Her patient heart was full of hope,
      For health she gave God thanks,
Till one day in an envelope
      I sealed a thousand francs,
And 'neath her door for her to see
      I slipped it secretly.

'Twas long after, I came to know
      My gift she never spent,
But gave to one of greater woe,
      And wearily she went . . .
To be of charity a part,--
      That stabbed her to the heart.

For one dark day we found her dead:
      Oh she was sweet to see!
Exalted in her garret bed
      With face like ivory . . .
Aye, though from lack of food she died,
      Unflawed she flagged her pride.


Scheme ABACDD CCCCDD EFEFBB GCGCCC CBCBCC
Poetic Form Etheree  (23%)
Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 01011101 110111 1100111 111 11111101 010111 1111101 111111 11110101 110111 01011101 110101 01011111 111111 1110110 110101 01011011 111100 11101111 111101 11111101 010011 11110001 110101 11111101 111111 01000101 111100 11111111 11101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 973
Words 180
Sentences 13
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 136
Words per stanza (avg) 37
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

54 sec read
97

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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