The Wildy Ones



The sheep are in the silver wood,
      The cows are in the broom;
The goats are in the wild mountain
      And won't be home by noon.
      
My mother sang that olden tune
      Most every night,
And to her newest she would croon
      By candle light;
While cuddling in the velvet gloom
      I'd dream of cows
That sought each dawn 'mid golden broom
      To gently browse.

Or I would glimpse the silver wood,
      The birchen glade,
Where pearly sheep in quiet mood
      Cropped unafraid;
But how I loved in lapsing drowse
      The mountain wild!
The goats were more than sheep and cows
      To one wee child.

For cows and sheep are shelter-wise,
      And love the lea;
While goats have starlight in their eyes,
      In cragland free . . .
And now on edge of endless sleep
      Wryly I note
How less I'm kin to kine and sheep
      Than rebel goat!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
92

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABXC CDCDBEBE AFXFEGEG HIHIJKJK
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 839
Words 148
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 8, 8, 8

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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    Which of these famous poems is written in villanelle form?
    A Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
    B Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
    C Funeral Blues
    D The Owl And The Pussycat