Gangrene



So often in the mid of night
          I wake me in my bed
With utter panic of affright
          To find my feet are dead;
And pace the floor to easy my pain
          And make them live again.

The folks at home are so discreet;
          They see me walk and walk
To keep the blood-flow in my feet,
          And though they never talk
I've heard them whisper: 'Mother may
          Have them cut off some day.'

Cut off my feet! I'd rather die . . .
          And yet the years of pain,
When in the darkness I will lie
          And pray to God in vain,
Thinking in agony: Oh why
Can doctors not annul our breath
          In honourable death?

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

35 sec read
245

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCC DEDEFF GCGCGHH
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 635
Words 117
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 7

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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