The Ballad Of Hard-luck Henry Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEE FFGGHHIJ KKLLMMNN OOPPDDQQ RRFFST OOUUVVWWNN XXNNYYZZA2A2Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank | A |
That's staked out nigh three hundred claims and every one a blank | A |
That's followed every fool stampede and seen the rise and fall | B |
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all | B |
That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song | C |
To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along | C |
That's sunk a dozen bed rock holes and not a speck in sight | D |
Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right | D |
Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man to booze | E |
But Hard Luck Smith was hoodoo proof he knew the way to lose | E |
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'Twas in the fall of nineteen four leap year I've heard them say | F |
When Hard Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay | F |
And lo as if to make amends for all the futile past | G |
Late in the year he struck it rich the real pay streak at last | G |
The riffles of his sluicing box were choked with speckled earth | H |
And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth | H |
And when in chill December's gloom his lucky lease expired | I |
He found that he had made a stake as big as he desired | J |
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One day while meditating on the waywardness of fate | K |
He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate | K |
A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life | L |
A woman with soft soothing ways a confidant a wife | L |
And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove | M |
He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's rich treasure trove | M |
When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon egg | N |
For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg | N |
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You know these Yukon eggs of ours some pink some green some blue | O |
A dollar per assorted tints assorted flavors too | O |
The supercilious cheechako might designate them high | P |
But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by and by | P |
Well Hard Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light | D |
And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight | D |
At last he made it out and then the legend ran like this | Q |
Will Klondike miner write to Peg Plumhollow Squashville Wis | Q |
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That night he got to thinking of this far off unknown fair | R |
It seemed so sort of opportune an answer to his prayer | R |
She flitted sweetly through his dreams she haunted him by day | F |
She smiled through clouds of nicotine she cheered his weary way | F |
At last he yielded to the spell his course of love he set | S |
Wisconsin his objective point his object Margaret | T |
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With every mile of sea and land his longing grew and grew | O |
He practised all his pretty words and these I fear were few | O |
At last one frosty evening with a cold chill down his spine | U |
He found himself before her house the threshold of the shrine | U |
His courage flickered to a spark then glowed with sudden flame | V |
He knocked he heard a welcome word she came his goddess came | V |
Oh she was fair as any flower and huskily he spoke | W |
I'm all the way from Klondike with a mighty heavy poke | W |
I'm looking for a lassie one whose Christian name is Peg | N |
Who sought a Klondike miner and who wrote it on an egg | N |
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The lassie gazed at him a space her cheeks grew rosy red | X |
She gazed at him with tear bright eyes then tenderly she said | X |
Yes lonely Klondike miner it is true my name is Peg | N |
It's also true I longed for you and wrote it on an egg | N |
My heart went out to someone in that land of night and cold | Y |
But oh I fear that Yukon egg must have been mighty old | Y |
I waited long I hoped and feared you should have come before | Z |
I've been a wedded woman now for eighteen months or more | Z |
I'm sorry since you've come so far you ain't the one that wins | A2 |
But won't you take a step inside I'll let you see the twins | A2 |
Robert Service
(1)
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