Analysis of The Stretcher-Bearer



My stretcher is one scarlet stain,
    And as I tries to scrape it clean,
I tell you wot -- I'm sick with pain
    For all I've 'eard, for all I've seen;
Around me is the 'ellish night,
    And as the war's red rim I trace,
I wonder if in 'Eaven's height,
    Our God don't turn away 'Is Face.

I don't care 'oose the Crime may be;
    I 'olds no brief for kin or clan;
I 'ymns no 'ate: I only see
    As man destroys his brother man;
I waves no flag: I only know,
    As 'ere beside the dead I wait,
A million 'earts is weighed with woe,
    A million 'omes is desolate.

In drippin' darkness, far and near,
    All night I've sought them woeful ones.
Dawn shudders up and still I 'ear
    The crimson chorus of the guns.
Look! like a ball of blood the sun
    'Angs o'er the scene of wrath and wrong. . . .
"Quick! Stretcher-bearers on the run!"
    O Prince of Peace! 'ow long, 'ow long?


Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGXGX XHXHIJIJ
Poetic Form
Metre 11011101 01111111 11111111 11111111 0111011 01011111 1101011 101110111 11110111 11111111 11111101 11011101 11111101 11010111 01011111 01011100 0110101 11111101 11010111 01010101 11011101 110011101 11010101 11111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 873
Words 171
Sentences 14
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 203
Words per stanza (avg) 57
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

53 sec read
70

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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