The Wood-cutter Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCC DEDE FGFG HIHI JGJG KLKL MNMN OPOP QRQR FSFS THTH UVUV| The sky is like an envelope | A |
| One of those blue official things | B |
| And sealing it to mock our hope | A |
| The moon a silver wafer clings | B |
| What shall we find when death gives leave | C |
| To read our sentence or reprieve | C |
| - | |
| I'm holding it down on God's scrap pile up on the fag end of earth | D |
| O'er me a menace of mountains a river that grits at my feet | E |
| Face to face with my soul self weighing my life at its worth | D |
| Wondering what I was made for here in my last retreat | E |
| - | |
| Last Ah yes it's the finish Have ever you heard a man cry | F |
| Sobs that rake him and rend him right from the base of the chest | G |
| That's how I've cried oh so often and now that my tears are dry | F |
| I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the infinite Rest | G |
| - | |
| Rest Well it's restful around me it's quiet clean to the core | H |
| The mountains pose in their ermine in golden the hills are clad | I |
| The big blue silt freighted Yukon seethes by my cabin door | H |
| And I think it's only the river that keeps me from going mad | I |
| - | |
| By day it's a ruthless monster a callous insatiate thing | J |
| With oily bubble and eddy with sudden swirling of breast | G |
| By night it's a writhing Titan sullenly murmuring | J |
| Ever and ever goaded and ever crying for rest | G |
| - | |
| It cries for its human tribute but me it will never drown | K |
| I've learned the lore of my river my river obeys me well | L |
| I hew and I launch my cordwood and raft it to Dawson town | K |
| Where wood means wine and women and incidentally hell | L |
| - | |
| Hell and the anguish thereafter Here as I sit alone | M |
| I'd give the life I have left me to lighten some load of care | N |
| The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to atone | M |
| Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend themselves ill to prayer | N |
| - | |
| Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate | O |
| A wretch in a cosmic death cell peaks for my prison bars | P |
| 'Whelmed by a world stupendous lonely and listless I wait | O |
| Drowned in a sea of silence strewn with confetti of stars | P |
| - | |
| See from far up the valley a rapier pierces the night | Q |
| The white search ray of a steamer Swiftly serenely it nears | R |
| A proud white alien presence a glittering galley of light | Q |
| Confident poised triumphant freighted with hopes and fears | R |
| - | |
| I look as one looks on a vision I see it pulsating by | F |
| I glimpse joy radiant faces I hear the thresh of the wheel | S |
| Hoof like my heart beats a moment then silence swoops from the sky | F |
| Darkness is piled upon darkness God only knows how I feel | S |
| - | |
| Maybe you've seen me sometimes maybe you've pitied me then | T |
| The lonely waif of the wood camp here by my cabin door | H |
| Some day you'll look and see not futile and outcast of men | T |
| I shall be far from your pity resting forevermore | H |
| - | |
| My life was a problem in ciphers a weary and profitless sum | U |
| Slipshod and stupid I worked it dazed by negation and doubt | V |
| Ciphers the total confronts me Oh Death with thy moistened thumb | U |
| Stoop like a petulant schoolboy wipe me forever out | V |
Robert William Service
(2)
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