Analysis of Benjamin Franklin



Franklin fathered bastards fourteen,
     (So I read in the New Yorker);
If it's true, in terms of courtin'
     Benny must have been a corker.
To be prudent I've aspired,
     And my passions I have mastered;
So that I have never sired
               A single bastard.

One of course can never know;
     But I think that if I had
It would give me quite a glow
     When a kiddie called me 'Dad.'
Watching toddlers at their play,
     Parentage I'd gladly claim,
But their mothers smiling say:
               'You're not to blame.'

Ben founded the Satevepost,
     And for that I much respect him;
But fourteen is quite a host
     Paternally to elect him.
'Fatherhood is not a crime,'
     Deemed fat Ben, 'there could be others . . .
Darlings, I had not the time
               To wed your mothers.'


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH CIXIJKJK
Poetic Form
Metre 10101011 11100110 1110111 10111010 1110101 01101110 1111101 01010 1111101 1111111 1111101 1010111 1010111 1001101 1110101 1111 11001 01111011 1111101 11011 101101 11111110 1011101 11110
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 786
Words 137
Sentences 10
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 180
Words per stanza (avg) 45
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 25, 2023

41 sec read
111

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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