Analysis of Recalling War
Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean,
The track aches only when the rain reminds.
The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood
The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm.
The blinded man sees with his ears and hands
As much or more than once with both his eyes.
Their war was fought these twenty years ago
And now assumes the nature-look of time,
As when the morning traveller turn and views
His wild night-stumbling carved into a hill.
What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags
But an infectionof the common sky
That sagged ominously upon the earth
Even when the season was the airiest May.
Down pressed the sky, and we, oppressed, thrust out
Boastful tongue, clenched fist and valiant yard.
Natural infirmiries were out of mode,
For Death was young again: patron alone
Of healthy dying, premature fate-spasm.
Fear made fine bed-fellows. Sick with delight
At life's discovered transitoriness,
Out youth became all-flesh and waived the mind.
Never was such antiqueness of romance,
Such tasty honey oozing from the heart.
And old importances came swimming back -
Wine, meat, log-fires, a roof over the head,
A weapon at the thigh, surgeons at call.
Even there was a use again for God -
A word of rage in lack of meat, wine, fire,
In ache of wounds beyond all surgeoning.
War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air,
Protesting logic or protesting love,
Until the unendurable moment struck -
The inward scream, the duty to run mad.
And we recall the merry ways of guns -
Nibbling the walls of factory and church
Like a child, piecrust; felling groves of trees
Like a child, dandelions with a switch.
Machine-guns rattle toy-like from a hill,
Down in a row the brave tin-soldiers fall:
A sight to be recalled in elder days
When learnedly the future we devote
To yet more boastful visions of despair.
Scheme | XAXXXXBXXC XXDXXXXXX XAXXXXXEXXB DAXFXXX XXXXCEXXF |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 100101111 0111010101 01101011111 0111110101 0101111101 1111111111 1111110101 0101010111 11010100101 11110010101 1111111011 1110101 1110000101 1010101011 1101010111 101110101 10010111 1111011001 1101001110 1111101101 110101 1101110101 10111101 1101010101 0111101 11110011001 0101011011 1011010111 01110111110 01110111 1101111101 1110011 0101110101 1101111101 0101010101 0101101 0101010111 011010111 10001110001 101110111 101100101 0111011101 1001011101 0111010101 11010101 1111010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,881 |
Words | 340 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 9, 11, 7, 9 |
Lines Amount | 46 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 304 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 68 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 1:42 min read
- 370 Views
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"Recalling War" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 22 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31159/recalling-war>.
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