Analysis of My Suicide
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
I've often wondered why
Old chaps who choose to die
In evil passes,
Before themselves they slay,
Invariably they
Take off their glasses?
As I strolled by the Castle cliff
An oldish chap I set my eyes on,
Who stood so singularly stiff
And stark against the blue horizon;
A poet fashioning a sonnet,
I thought - how rapt he labours on it!
And then I blinked and stood astare,
And questioned at my sight condition,
For I was seeing empty air -
He must have been an apparition.
Amazed I gazed . . . no one was there:
My sanity roused my suspicion.
I strode to where I saw him stand
So solitary in the sun -
Nothing! just empty sew and land,
no smallest sign of anyone.
While down below I heard the roar
Of waves, five hundred feet or more.
I had been drinking, I confess;
There was confusion in my brain,
And I was feeling more or less
The fumes of overnight champagne.
So standing on that dizzy shelf:
"You saw no one," I told myself.
"No need to call the local law,
For after all its not your business.
You just imagined what you saw . . ."
Then I was seized with sudden dizziness:
For at my feet, beyond denying,
A pair of spectacles were lying.
And so I simply let them lie,
And sped from that accursed spot.
No lover of the police am I,
And sooner would be drunk than not.
"I'll scram," said I, "and leave the locals
To find and trace them dam bi-focals."
Scheme | AABCCB DXDEFF GEGEGE HEHEGG IJIJKK LMLMNN AOAOXB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110101 111111 01010 010111 010001 11110 11110101 11111111 11110001 010101010 010100010 11111111 0111011 010111010 11110101 11111010 01111111 110011010 11111111 1100001 10110101 1101110 11011101 11110111 11110101 11010011 01110111 01110101 11011101 1111111 11110101 110111110 11010111 1111110100 111101010 011100010 01110111 011111 110100111 01011111 111101010 11011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,323 |
Words | 264 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 148 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 38 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:18 min read
- 74 Views
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