Analysis of A Song of Defeat
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874 (Kensington, London) – 1936 (Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire)
The line breaks and the guns go under,
The lords and the lackeys ride the plain;
I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder,
And the whole of my heart grows young again.
For our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle,
As once in my life they throbbed and reeled;
I have found my youth in the lost battle,
I have found my heart on the battlefield.
For we that fight till the world is free,
We are not easy in victory:
We have known each other too long, my brother,
And fought each other, the world and we.
And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,
And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint,
When we were angry and poor and happy,
And proud of seeing our names in print.
For so they conquered and so we scattered,
When the Devil road and his dogs smelt gold,
And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered;
When I was twenty and odd years old.
When the mongrel men that the market classes
Had slimy hands upon England's rod,
And sword in hand upon Afric's passes
Her last Republic cried to God.
For the men no lords can buy or sell,
They sit not easy when all goes well,
They have said to each other what naught can smother,
They have seen each other, our souls and hell.
It is all as of old, the empty clangour,
The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page,
The huckster who, mocking holy anger,
Painfully paints his face with rage.
And the faith of the poor is faint and partial,
And the pride of the rich is all for sale,
And the chosen heralds of England's Marshal
Are the sandwich-men of the Daily Mail,
And the niggards that dare not give are glutted,
And the feeble that dare not fail are strong,
So while the City of Toil is gutted,
I sit in the saddle and sing my song.
For we that fight till the world is free,
We have no comfort in victory;
We have read each other as Cain his brother,
We know each other, these slaves and we.
Scheme | axaxbcbcdedeFfaf fgfghihijkjkllal amamdndnopopFfaf |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011001110 010010101 1111101010 0011111101 110111011111 1011101111 111111011 011101111 10111001110 110111101 1111100110 111111010 111110111 111100100 11111011110 011100101 01110111110 010101001101 1101001010 0111010101 1111001110 1010101111 00110101110 111100111 1011101010 110101101 010101110 01010111 101111111 111101111 111111011110 11111010101 1111110101 010110111 0101101010 10011111 00110111010 0011011111 00101011010 1010110101 0011111110 0010111111 1101011110 1100100111 111110111 111100100 11111011110 111101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,064 |
Words | 404 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 16, 16 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 519 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 133 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 05, 2023
- 2:01 min read
- 97 Views
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"A Song of Defeat" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/15964/a-song-of-defeat>.
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