Analysis of Forward
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes
In weary, woeful, waiting times;
In doleful hours of battle-din,
Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
Through vigils of the fateful night,
In lousy barns by candle-light;
In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
By ragged grove, by ruined road,
By hearths accurst where Love abode;
By broken altars, blackened shrines
I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes.
I've solaced me with scraps of song
The desolated ways along:
Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
And meadows reaped by death alone;
By blazing cross and splintered spire,
By headless Virgin in the mire;
By gardens gashed amid their bloom,
By gutted grave, by shattered tomb;
Beside the dying and the dead,
Where rocket green and rocket red,
In trembling pools of poising light,
With flowers of flame festoon the night.
Ah me! by what dark ways of wrong
I've cheered my heart with scraps of song.
So here's my sheaf of war-won verse,
And some is bad, and some is worse.
And if at times I curse a bit,
You needn't read that part of it;
For through it all like horror runs
The red resentment of the guns.
And you yourself would mutter when
You took the things that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God's sight
War ever, ever can be right.
Yet may it not be, crime and war
But effort misdirected are?
And if there's good in war and crime,
There may be in my bits of rhyme,
My songs from out the slaughter mill:
So take or leave them as you will.
Scheme | AabbcccxddxA eeffgghhiiccee jjkkllmmnncc xxoopp |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011111 01010101 010101101 11110100 11010101 01011101 0111001 11010111 11011101 1111101 11010101 11011111 1111111 01101 11011101 0111101 11010101 11010001 11010111 11011101 01010001 11010101 01001111 11011101 11111111 11111111 11111111 01110111 01111101 11011111 11111101 01010101 01011101 11011101 01111111 11010101 01011011 11010111 11111101 11000101 01110101 11101111 11110101 11111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,517 |
Words | 287 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 14, 12, 6 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 303 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 71 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:28 min read
- 41 Views
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"Forward" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32133/forward>.
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