Analysis of Rhyme-Smith
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
Oh, I was born a lyric babe
(That last word is a bore -
It's only rhyme is astrolabe,"
Whose meaning I ignore.)
From cradlehood I lisped in numbers,
Made jingles even in my slumbers.
Said Ma: "He'll be a bard, I know it."
Said Pa: "let's hoe he will outgrow it."
Alas! I never did and so
A dreamer and a drone was I,
Who persevered in want and woe
His misery to versify.
Yea, I was doomed to be a failure
(Old Browning rhymes that last with "pale lure"):
And even starving in the gutter,
My macaronics I would utter.
Then in a poor, cheap book I crammed,
And to the public maw I tossed
My bitter Dirges of the Damned,
My Lyrics of the Lost.
"Let carping critic flay and flout
My Ditties of the Down and Out -
"There now," said I, "I've done with verse,
My love, my weakness and my curse."
Then lo! (As I would fain believe,
Before they crown, the fates would shame us)
I went to sleep one bitter eve,
And woke to find that I was famous. . . .
And so the sunny sequels were a
Gay villa on the Riviera,
A bank account, a limousine, a
Life patterned dolce e divina.
Oh, yes, my lyric flight is flighty;
My muse is much more mite than mighty:
But poetry has been my friend,
And rhyming's saved me in the end.
Scheme | ABABCCDD EXEFGXGG HIHIJJKK FLFLMMMX NNOO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110101 111101 110111 110101 1111010 11010011 111101111 11111111 01110101 01000111 1010101 110011 111111010 110111111 010100010 111110 10011111 01010111 1101101 110101 11010101 11010101 11111111 11110011 11111101 011101111 11111101 011111110 010101000 11010010 01010100 110111 111101110 111111110 11001111 0111001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,177 |
Words | 246 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 179 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 48 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:14 min read
- 47 Views
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"Rhyme-Smith" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32402/rhyme-smith>.
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