Analysis of Ommission



What man has not betrayed
      Some sacred trust?
If haply you are made
      Of honest dust,
Vaunt not of glory due,
      Of triumph won:
Think, think of duties you
      Have left undone.

But if in mercy hope,
      Despite your sin,
The gates of Heaven ope'
      To let you in:
Pray, pray that when God reads
      Your judgement due,
He may forget good deeds
      You did not do.

Ommission sins may be
      The bitterest,
And wring in memory
      A heart opprest;
So when sweet pity pleads,
      Let us not rue
Too late, too late Kind Deeds
      We did not do.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGCGC HBHAGCGC
Poetic Form
Metre 111101 1101 11111 1101 111101 1101 111101 1101 110101 0111 011101 1110 111111 1101 110111 1111 1111 0100 010100 011 111101 1111 111111 1111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 563
Words 101
Sentences 5
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 16
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 128
Words per stanza (avg) 33
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
80

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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