Analysis of Her Toys



I sat her in her baby chair,
      And set upon its tray
Her kewpie doll and teddy bear,
      But no, she would not play.
Although they looked so wistfully
      Her favour to implore,
She laughed at me with elfin glee
      And dashed them to the floor.

I brought her lamb and circus clown,
      But it was just the same:
With shrill of joy she threw them down
      As if it were a game.
Maybe it was, for she would look
      To see where they were lain
And act pathetic till I took
      Her toys to her again.

To-day there's just an empty chair,
      And 'mid a mist of pain
I'd give my life if she were there
      To toss her toys again.
A tiny ghost is all I see,
      Who laughs the while I cry,
And lifts her little hands with glee
            --Unto the sky.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGI AHAICJCJ
Poetic Form
Metre 11000101 010111 0110101 111111 1111100 01101 11111101 011101 11010101 111101 11111111 111001 10111111 111101 01010111 011001 11111101 010111 11111101 110101 01011111 110111 01010111 1001
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 764
Words 147
Sentences 7
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 176
Words per stanza (avg) 48
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
126

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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