Analysis of Sentry

Ernst Toller 1893 (Samotschin, Posen) – 1939 (New York City)



Starry sky.
To restrain the beast
my rifle glows,
to fix the black barrel
to the milky moon.
The cry of the Snowy Owl.
A baby whimpers in the village.
The bullet,
treacherous wolf,
bursts into the sleeping house.
The night smells of lime-tree blossoms.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJK
Poetic Form
Metre 101 10101 1101 110110 10101 0110101 01010010 010 1001 1010101 01111110
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 250
Words 47
Sentences 7
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 11
Lines Amount 11
Letters per line (avg) 18
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 198
Words per stanza (avg) 45
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

14 sec read
48

Ernst Toller

Ernst Toller was a German left-wing playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, after which he became the head of its army. He was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlin. While in prison Toller wrote several plays which gained him international renown. They were performed in London and New York as well as Berlin. In the year 2000, several of his plays were published in an English translation. In 1933 Toller was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power. He did a lecture tour in 1936–1937 in the United States and Canada, settling in California for a while before going to New York. He joined other exiles there. Struggling financially and depressed at learning his brother and sister had been sent to a concentration camp in Germany, he committed suicide in May 1939. more…

All Ernst Toller poems | Ernst Toller Books

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