Analysis of No More Music



The Porch was blazoned with geranium bloom;
Myrtle and jasmine meadows lit the lea;
With rose and violet the vale's perfume
Languished to where the hyacinthine sea
Dreamed tenderly . . . "And I must go," said he.

He spoke in that dim, ghostly voice of his:
"I was a singer; then the Was . . . and GAS."
(I had to lean to him, no word to miss.)
"We bought this little café nigh to Grasse;
With sun and flowers my last few days will pass.

"And music too. I have my mandolin:
Say! Maybe you can strum on your guitar . . .
Come on - we two will make melodious din,
While Madame sings to us behind the bar:
You'll see how sweet Italian folk-songs are."

So he would play and I would thrum the while;
I used to there every lovely day;
His wife would listen with a sunny smile,
And when I left: "Please come again," she'd say.
"He seems quite sad when you have one away."

Alas! I had to leave without good-bye,
And lived in sooty cities for ayear.
Oh, how my heart ached for that happy sky!
Then, then one day my café I drew near -
God! it was strange how I was gripped with fear.

So still it was; I saw no mandolin,
No gay guitar with ribbons blue and red;
Then all in black, stone-faced the wife came in . . .
I did not ask; I looked, she shook her head:
"La musique est fini," was all she said.


Scheme ABABB XCXCC DEDEE FGFGG HEHII DJDJJ
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 0111101001 100101101 1101000101 1011011 1100011111 1101110111 1101010101 1111111111 111101111 11010111111 010111110 1101111101 11111101001 1101110101 1111010111 1111011101 1111100101 1111010101 0111110111 1111111101 0111110111 010101011 1111111101 111111111 1111111111 111111110 1101110101 1101110110 1111111101 1101101111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,270
Words 258
Sentences 28
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 158
Words per stanza (avg) 44
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:16 min read
130

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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