Analysis of Comfort



Say! You've struck a heap of trouble --
    Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
    You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
    Health is failing, wish you'd die --
Why, you've still the sunshine left you
    And the big, blue sky.

Sky so blue it makes you wonder
    If it's heaven shining through;
Earth so smiling 'way out yonder,
    Sun so bright it dazzles you;
Birds a-singing, flowers a-flinging
    All their fragrance on the breeze;
Dancing shadows, green, still meadows --
    Don't you mope, you've still got these.

These, and none can take them from you;
    These, and none can weigh their worth.
What! you're tired and broke and beaten? --
    Why, you're rich -- you've got the earth!
Yes, if you're a tramp in tatters,
    While the blue sky bends above
You've got nearly all that matters --
    You've got God, and God is love.


Scheme XABABCBC DBDBXEXE BFXFGHGH
Poetic Form
Metre 11101110 1010111 11101011 1110111 11111011 1110111 1110111 00111 11111110 1110101 11101110 111111 101010010 1110101 101111 1111111 10111111 1011111 111001010 1111101 11101010 1011101 11101110 1110111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 885
Words 161
Sentences 9
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 212
Words per stanza (avg) 53
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 04, 2023

52 sec read
160

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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