Analysis of Spanish Men

Robert William Service 1874 – 1958



The Men of Seville are, they say,
The laziest of Spain.
Consummate artists in delay,
Allergical to strain;
Fr if you have a job for them,
And beg them to be spry,
They only look at you with phlegm:
"Mañana," they reply.

The Men of gay Madrid, I'm told,
Siesta's law revere;
The custom is so ages old,
And to tradition dear;
So if you want a job done soon,
And shyly ask them: "When?"
They say: "Come back this afternoon:
We'll hope to do it them."

The Men of Barcelona are
Such mostly little caps,
That when you see them from afar
They make you think of Japs;
Yet they can take life on the run,
Quite peppy, I'll allow,
For when there's something to be done,
They shout: "We'll do it NOW."


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGXGC HIHIJKJK
Poetic Form
Metre 01101111 010011 10010001 111 11110111 011111 11011111 110101 01110111 1101 01011101 010101 11110111 010111 1111101 111111 0110101 110101 11111101 111111 11111101 110101 11110111 111111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 675
Words 140
Sentences 6
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 171
Words per stanza (avg) 45
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
78

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…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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