Analysis of The Wood-Cutter
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
The sky is like an envelope,
One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
What shall we find when death gives leave
To read--our sentence or reprieve?
I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the fag-end of earth;
O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet;
Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth;
Wondering what I was made for, here in my last retreat.
Last! Ah, yes, it's the finish. Have ever you heard a man cry?
(Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from the base of the chest.)
That's how I've cried, oh, so often; and now that my tears are dry,
I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the infinite Rest.
Rest! Well, it's restful around me; it's quiet clean to the core.
The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden the hills are clad;
The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my cabin door,
And I think it's only the river that keeps me from going mad.
By day it's a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate thing,
With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling of breast;
By night it's a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring,
Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest.
It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never drown.
I've learned the lore of my river; my river obeys me well.
I hew and I launch my cordwood, and raft it to Dawson town,
Where wood means wine and women, and, incidentally, hell.
Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit alone
I'd give the life I have left me to lighten some load of care:
(The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to atone;
Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend themselves ill to prayer.)
Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate;
A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison bars;
'Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless I wait,
Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti of stars.
See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the night,
The white search-ray of a steamer. Swiftly, serenely it nears;
A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley of light,
Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with hopes and fears.
I look as one looks on a vision; I see it pulsating by;
I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh of the wheel.
Hoof-like my heart beats a moment; then silence swoops from the sky.
Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only knows how I feel.
Maybe you've seen me sometimes; maybe you've pitied me then--
The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my cabin door.
Some day you'll look and see not; futile and outcast of men,
I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore.
My life was a problem in ciphers, a weary and profitless sum.
Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation and doubt.
Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy moistened thumb,
Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, wipe me forever out!
Scheme | ABABCC DEDE FGFG HIHI JGJG KLKL MNMN OPOP QRQR FSFS THTF UVUV |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111110 11110101 010111101 01010101 11111111 111010101 1101111111101111 10101011001011111 11111111011111 10011111101101 111101011011011 11110111101101 111111100111111 11001001001101001 111100111101101 010101100100111 011111111101 0111100101111101 1110101001011 110100101101011 111010101100 10010100101011 111110101111101 110111101100111 11011110111101 1111010001001 10010010111101 110111111101111 01001101011001101 1111110101111 10010101101011 01001011111101 11010101001011 10011101101011 11110100100101 0111101010010011 0111001001001011 100101011101 111111010111101 111100101101101 111110101101101 101101101101111 1011101101111 01011011111101 1111011100111 11111110101 11101001010011 10101111101001 10100111111101 1101001110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 3,069 |
Words | 532 |
Sentences | 32 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 50 |
Letters per line (avg) | 44 |
Words per line (avg) | 11 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 184 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 44 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:44 min read
- 53 Views
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"The Wood-Cutter" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32694/the-wood-cutter>.
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