Analysis of The Woman At The Gate



"Where is your little boy to-day?"
      I asked her at the gate.
"I used to see him at his play,
      And often I would wait:
He was so beautiful, so bright,
      I watched him with delight.

"He had a tiny motor-car
      And it was painted red;
He wound it up; it ran so far,
      So merrily it sped.
I think he told me that it was
      A gift from Santa Claus."

The woman said: "It ran so far
      He followed it with joy.
Then came a real motor-car,--
      He sought to save his toy . . .
My little boy is far away
      Where angel children play.

"His father perished in the War;
      Now I am all alone,
And death is all I'm longing for . . ."
      So said with face of stone
That woman. "Curse their crazy cars
                 And cruel wars!"


Scheme ABABCC DEDEXX DFDFAA GHGHXX
Poetic Form
Metre 11110111 110101 11111111 010111 11110011 111101 11010101 011101 11111111 110011 11111111 011101 01011111 110111 1101101 111111 11011101 110101 11010001 111101 01111101 111111 11011101 0101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 750
Words 144
Sentences 16
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 123
Words per stanza (avg) 36
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
64

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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