The Battle



Dames should be doomed to dungeons
Who masticate raw onions.

She was the cuddly kind of Miss
          A man can love to death;
But when I sought to steal a kiss
          I wilted from a breath
With onion odour so intense
          I lost my loving sense.

Yet she was ever in my thought
          Like some exotic flower,
And so a garlic bulb I bought
          And chewed it by the hour;
Then when we met I thrilled to see
          'Twas she who shrank from me.

So breath to breath we battled there,
          To dominate each other;
And though her onions odious were,
          My garlic was a smother;
Till loth I said: 'If we would kiss
          Let's call an armistice.

'Now we have proved that we are true
          To our opinions,
My garlic I'll give up if you
          Give up your onions.'
And so next day with honey sips
          How sweet her lips!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

46 sec read
104

Quick analysis:

Scheme AA BCBCDD XEXEFF XEEEBX GAGAHH
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 848
Words 154
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 2, 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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