Analysis of Lottery Ticket



'A ticket for the lottery
I've purchased every week,' said she
               'For years a score
Though desperately poor am I,
Oh how I've scrimped and scraped to buy
               One chance more.

Each week I think I'll gain the prize,
And end my sorrows and my sighs,
               For I'll be rich;
Then nevermore I'll eat bread dry,
With icy hands to cry and cry
               And stitch and stitch.'

'Tis true she won the premier prize;
It was of formidable size,
               Ten million francs.
I know, because the man who sold
It to her splenically told
               He got no thanks.

The lucky one was never found,
For she was snugly underground,
               And minus breath;
And with that ticket tucked away,
In some old stocking, so they say,
               She starved to death.


Scheme AABCCB DDECCE DDFGGF HHIJJI
Poetic Form
Metre 01010100 110100111 1101 11000111 11110111 111 11111101 01110011 1111 1101111 11011101 0101 11110011 11110001 1101 11010111 11011 1111 01011101 1111010 0101 01110101 01110111 1111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 786
Words 133
Sentences 6
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 131
Words per stanza (avg) 32
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 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…

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