Analysis of Visibility



Because my eyes were none to bright
       Strong spectacles I bought,
And lo! there sprang into my sight
       A life beyond my thought:
A world of wonder and delight
       My magic lenses brought.

Aye, sudden leaping in my sight
       The far became the near;
Life unbelievably was bright,
       And vividly was clear.
My heart was lifted with delight,
       Then--then I shrank in fear.

For faces I had thought were gay
       I saw were lined with care,
While strange corruption and decay
       Surprised me everywhere:
Dismayed I put my specs away,--
       Such truth I could not bear.

And now I do not want to see
       With clarity of view;
For while there's heaven hell may be
       More tragically true:
Though dim may be Reality,
       Sheer love shines through.


Scheme AXABAB ACACAC DEDEDE FGFGFG
Poetic Form
Metre 01110111 110011 01110111 010111 01110001 110101 11010011 010101 1010011 010011 11110101 111101 11011101 110111 11010001 01110 01111101 111111 01111111 110011 11110111 11001 111110 1111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 774
Words 130
Sentences 7
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 137
Words per stanza (avg) 32
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

39 sec read
44

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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