Analysis of A Year's Casualties
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
Slain as they lay by the secret, slow,
Pitiless hand of an unseen foe,
Two score thousand old soldiers have crossed
The river to join the loved and lost.
In the space of a year their spirits fled,
Silent and white, to the camp of the dead.
One after one, they fall asleep
And the pension agents awake to weep,
And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wail
As the souls flit by on the evening gale.
O Father of Battles, pray give us release
From the horrors of peace, the horrors of peace!
Scheme | AABBCC DDEEFF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111110101 100111011 111011011 010110101 0011011101 1001101101 11011101 0010100111 0101011011 1011110101 11011011101 10101101011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 485 |
Words | 96 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 12 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 191 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 47 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 28 sec read
- 381 Views
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"A Year's Casualties" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1678/a-year%27s-casualties>.
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