Gentle Gaoler



Being a gaoler I'm supposed
          To be a hard-boiled guy;
Yet never prison walls enclosed
          A kinder soul than I:
Passing my charges precious pills
          To end their ills.

And if in gentle sleep they die,
          And pass to pleasant peace,
No one suspects that it is I
          Who gave them their release:
No matter what the Doctor thinks,
          The Warden winks.

A lifer's is a fearful fate;
          It wrings the heart of me.
And what a saving to the State
          A sudden death must be!
Doomed men should have the legal right
          To end their plight.

And so my veronel they take,
          And bid goodbye to pain;
And sleep, and never, never wake
          To living hell again:
Oh call me curst or call me blest,--
          I give them rest.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
67

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCC BDBDEE FGFGHH IXIXJJ
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 770
Words 133
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 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…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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