Analysis of Channel Firing
Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the judgement day
And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,
The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:
"All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.
"That this is not the judgment hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hells floor for so much threatening...
"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."
So down we lay again. "I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!"
And many a skeleton shook his head.
"Instead of preaching forty year,"
My neighbor Oarson Thirdly said,
"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."
Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GAGX HIHI JKJK HFHF LMLM HNHN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1111101 111010111 0101101 11110101 010111 0101111 01110101 01110101 01111111 110010111 11011101 01111111 11010111 11110111 1111111 1111100110 111101010 1111011 111011110 11111100 11111101 11010101 11011111 01010101 111101110 10110101 111111110 010010100 0100100111 01110101 1101101 111111101 010101010 101100101 1111110 0100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,264 |
Words | 237 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 107 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 1:10 min read
- 292 Views
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"Channel Firing" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36351/channel-firing>.
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