Analysis of Old Trouper
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
I was Mojeska's leading man
And famous parts I used to play,
But now I do the best I can
To earn my bread from day to day;
Here in this Burg of Breaking Hears,
Where one wins as a thousand fail,
I play a score of scurvy parts
Till Time writes Finis to my tale.
My wife is dead, my daughter wed,
With heaps of trouble of their own;
And though I hold aloft my head
I'm humble, scared and all alone . . .
To-night I burn each photograph,
Each record of my former fame,
And oh, how bitterly I laugh
And feed them to the hungry flame!
Behold how handsome I was then -
What glowing eye, what noble mien;
I towered above my fellow men,
And proudly strode the painted scene.
Ah, Vanity! What fools are we,
With empty ends and foolish aims . . .
There now, I fling with savage glee
My David Garrick to the flames.
"Is this a dagger that I see":
Oh, how I used to love that speech;
We were old-fashioned - "hams" maybe,
Yet we Young Arrogance could teach.
"Out, out brief candle!" There are gone
My Lear, my Hamlet and MacBeth;
And now by ashes cold and wan
I wait my cue, my prompter Death.
This life of ours is just a play;
Its end is fashioned from the start;
Fate writes each word we have to say,
And puppet-like we strut our part.
Once I wore laurels on my brow,
But now I wait, a sorry clown,
To make my furtive, farewell bow . . .
Haste Time! Oh, ring the Curtain down.
Scheme | ABABXCXC DEDEFGFG HIHIJKJK JLJLXMXM BNBNOPOP |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (30%) Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 111101 01011111 11110111 11111111 10111101 11110101 1101111 1111111 11111101 11110111 01110111 11010101 1111110 10111101 01110011 01110101 01110111 11011101 110011101 01010101 11001111 11010101 11111101 11010101 11010111 11111111 10110110 11110011 11110111 11110001 01110101 1111111 111101101 11110101 11111111 010111101 11110111 11110101 1111011 11110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,336 |
Words | 270 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 205 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 55 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 130 Views
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"Old Trouper" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32343/old-trouper>.
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