Analysis of Sacrifice



I gave an eye to save from night
          A babe born blind;
And now with eager semi-sight
          Vast joy I find
To think a child can share with me
          Earth ecstasy!

Delight of dawn with dewy gleam
          On damask rose;
Crimson and gold as pennons stream
          Where sunset flows;
And sight most nigh to paradise,
          Star-studded skies.

Ah! How in old of age I feel,
          E'er end my days,
Could I star-splendoured sky reveal
          To childish gaze,
Not one eye would I give, but two,--
          Well, wouldn't you?


Scheme ABABCC DEDEXX FGFGHH
Poetic Form
Metre 11111111 0111 01110101 1111 11011111 1100 01111101 1101 1001111 111 0111110 1101 11011111 10111 1111101 1101 11111111 1101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 543
Words 91
Sentences 5
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 20
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 118
Words per stanza (avg) 29
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 19, 2023

27 sec read
222

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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