Analysis of The Men That Don't Fit In
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.
Scheme | ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJKLKL XMXMXAXA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101111110 011111 111011101 0110111 110101101 0110101 110110101 0111111 111111111 1110101 1111010111 0110101 111111101 1011111 111010111 1100101 010111101 1010101 101010101 1100111 010111111 0111111 1111110111 00110111 11111111111 1111111 110101111 0110111 1111110101 1110111 10101011001 1011110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,249 |
Words | 247 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 227 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 61 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 1:17 min read
- 892 Views
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"The Men That Don't Fit In" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32591/the-men-that-don%27t-fit-in>.
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