Plebeian Plutocrat

Robert William Service 1874 – 1958



I own a gorgeous Cadillac,
     A chauffeur garbed in blue;
And as I sit behind his back
     His beefy neck I view.
Yet let me whisper, though you may
     Think me a queer old cuss,
From Claude I often sneak away
               To board a bus.

A democrat, I love the crowd,
     The bustle and the din;
The market wives who gab aloud
     As they go out and in.
I chuckle as I pay my dime,
     With mien meticulous:
You can't believe how happy I'm;
               Aboard a bus.

The driver of my Cadillac
     Has such a haughty sneer;
I'm sure he would give me the sack
     If he beheld me here.
His horror all my friends would share
     Could they but see me thus:
A gleeful multi-millionaire
               Aboard a bus.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
104

Quick analysis:

Scheme ababcdcd efefgdgD axaxhdhD
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 712
Words 131
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8

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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