Analysis of Wonder



For failure I was well equipped
       And should have come to grief,
By atavism grimly gripped,
       A fool beyond belief.
But lo! the Lord was good to me,
       And with a heart to sing,
He gave me to a rare degree
       The Gift of Wondering.

I could not play a stalwart part
       My shoddy soul to save,
And should have gone with broken heart
       A begger to the grave;
But praise to my anointed sight
       As wandering I went,
I sang of living with delight
       In terms of Wonderment.

Aye, starry-eyed did I rejoice
       With marvel of a child,
And there were those who heard my voice
       Although my words were wild:
So as I go my wistful way,
       With worship let me sing,
A treasure to my farewell day
       God's Gift of Wondering.


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGXGX HIHIJDJD
Poetic Form
Metre 11011101 011111 11000101 010101 11011111 010111 11110101 011100 11110101 110111 01111101 01101 11110101 110011 11110101 011100 11011101 110101 01011111 11101 11111101 110111 0101111 111100
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 755
Words 136
Sentences 6
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 176
Words per stanza (avg) 45
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 19, 2023

41 sec read
147

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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