Analysis of Fore-Warning

Robert William Service 1874 – 1958



I'd rather be the Jester than the Minstrel of the King;
I'd rather jangle cap and bells than twang the stately harp;
I'd rather make his royal ribs with belly-laughter ring,
Than see him sitting in the suds and sulky as a carp.
I'd rather be the Court buffoon than its most high-browed sage:
        So you who read, take head, take heed, -
        Ere yet you turn my page.


Scheme ABABCDC
Poetic Form
Metre 11010101010101 11010101110101 11011101110101 1111000101101 11010101111111 11111111 111111
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 376
Words 71
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 7
Lines Amount 7
Letters per line (avg) 39
Words per line (avg) 10
Letters per stanza (avg) 274
Words per stanza (avg) 69
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

22 sec read
54

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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