Two Words



'God' is composed of letters three,
          But if you put an 'l'
Before the last it seems to me
          A synonym for Hell.
For all of envy, greed and hate
          The human heart can hold
Respond unto the devil's bait
                    Of Gold.

When God created Gold to be
          For our adorning fit,
I little think he dreamed that we
          Would come to worship it.
But when you ruefully have scanned
          The chronicles of Time,
You'll find that lucre lends a hand
                    To Crime.

So if you are a millionaire,
          To be of Heaven sure,
Give every penny you can spare
          Unto the sick and poor.
From Gold strike out the evil 'ell,'
          And so with letters odd
You can with peace of spirit spell
                    Just GOD.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

39 sec read
121

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCD AEAEFGFG HXHXBIBI
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 766
Words 129
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 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 poets did not use capital letters in his works?
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