Analysis of The Locket



From out her shabby rain-coat pocket
The little Jew girl in the train
Produced a dinted silver locket
With pasted in it portraits twain.
"These are my parents, sir" she said;
"Or were, for now I fear they're dead.

"I know to Belsen they were sent;
I never heard of them again.
So many were like that - they went,
Our woeful quest was all in vain.
I was in London with a friend,
Or I, too, would have shared their end.

"They could have got away, I'm told,
And joined me here in Marylebne,
But Grannie was so sick and old,
They could not leave her there alone.
When they were seized she cried and cried:
Thank God! 'Twas in her bed she died.

"How did they die? I cannot bear
To think of that - it crazes me.
My mother was so sweet, so fair;
My father handsome as you see . . .
I'm sure no daughter ever had
More lovely parents . . . Yes, it's sad.

"But for their loss I shall not grieve;
I'll hug the hope they still survive;
Oh, I must make myself believe
Somehow, somewhere they're still alive. . . .

"Well, that's my only souvenir,
A locket stained with many a tear."


Scheme XAXABB CXCADD EAEXFF GHGHII JKJK XG
Poetic Form Etheree  (33%)
Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 110101110 01011001 01011010 11001101 11110111 10111111 1111101 11011101 11001111 101011101 11010101 11111111 11110111 011101 1111101 11110101 11011101 11100111 11111101 1111111 11011111 11010111 11110101 11010111 11111111 11011101 1111101 111101 1111001 010111001
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,047
Words 206
Sentences 23
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 4, 2
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 132
Words per stanza (avg) 35
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:03 min read
60

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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