Compassion



A beggar in the street I saw,
Who held a hand like withered claw,
         As cold as clay;
But as I had no silver groat
To give, I buttoned up my coat
         And turned away.
         
And then I watched a working wife
Who bore the bitter load of life
         With lagging limb;
A penny from her purse she took,
And with sweet pity in her look
         Gave it to him.

Anon I spied a shabby dame
Who fed six sparrows as they came
         In famished flight;
She was so poor and frail and old,
Yet crumbs of her last crust she doled
         With pure delight.

Then sudden in my heart was born
For my sleek self a savage scorn,--
         Urge to atone;
So when a starving cur I saw
I bandaged up its bleeding paw
         And bought a bone.

For God knows it is good to give;
We may not have so long to live,
         So if we can,
Let's do each day a kindly deed,
And stretch a hand to those in need,
         Bird, beast or man.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 26, 2023

54 sec read
640

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABCCB DDEFFE GGHIIH JJKAAK XXLMML
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 912
Words 181
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 6

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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