Analysis of A Grain Of Sand



If starry space no limit knows
      And sun succeeds to sun,
There is no reason to suppose
      Our earth the only one.
'Mid countless constellations cast
      A million worlds may be,
With each a God to bless or blast
      And steer to destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so
      To guide each vital stream,
With over all to boss the show
      A Deity supreme.
Such magnitudes oppress my mind;
      From cosmic space it swings;
So ultimately glad to find
      Relief in little things.

For look! Within my hollow hand,
      While round the earth careens,
I hold a single grain of sand
      And wonder what it means.
Ah! If I had the eyes to see,
      And brain to understand,
I think Life's mystery might be
      Solved in this grain of sand.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJDIDI
Poetic Form
Metre 11011101 010111 11110101 1010101 1100101 010111 11011111 011100 11010111 111101 11011101 010001 1100111 110111 11000111 010101 11011101 110101 11010111 010111 11110111 01101 11110011 101111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 748
Words 133
Sentences 10
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 178
Words per stanza (avg) 44
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
211

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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