Analysis of Divine Detachment



One day the Great Designer sought
His Clerk of Birth and Death.
Said he: "Two souls are in my thought,
to whom I gave life-breath.
I deemed my work was fitly done,
But yester-eve I saw
That in the finished brain of one
There was a tiny flaw.

"It worried me, and I would know,
Since I am all to blame,
What happened to them down below,
Of honour or of shame;
For if the later did befall,
My sorrow will be grave . . ."
Then numbers astronomical
unto the Clerk he gave.

The Keeper of the Rolls replied:
"Of them I've little trace;
But one he was a Prince of pride
And one of lowly race.
One was a Holy Saint proclaimed;
For one no hell sufficed . . . .
Let's see - the last was Nero named,
The other . . . Jesus Christ."


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFXGXG HIHIJKJK
Poetic Form
Metre 11010101 111101 11111011 111111 1111111 11111 10010111 110101 11010111 111111 11011101 11111 11010101 110111 1100100 100111 01010101 111101 11110111 011101 11010101 111101 11011101 010101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 703
Words 142
Sentences 17
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 177
Words per stanza (avg) 49
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
105

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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