Analysis of The Next War
You young friskies who today
Jump and fight in Father’s hay
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end?
Boys, from the first time you prod
And thrust with spears of curtain-rod,
From the first time you tear and slash
Your long-bows from the garden ash,
Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,
Binding the split tops together,
From that same hour by fate you’re bound
As champions of this stony ground,
Loyal and true in everything,
To serve your Army and your King,
Prepared to starve and sweat and die
Under some fierce foreign sky,
If only to keep safe those joys
That belong to British boys,
To keep young Prussians from the soft
Scented hay of father’s loft,
And stop young Slavs from cutting bows
And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows.
Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you’ll have to play, all in;
It’s the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.
Wars don’t change except in name;
The next one must go just the same,
And new foul tricks unguessed before
Will win and justify this War.
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage;
Courtly ministers will stop
At home and fight to the last drop;
By the million men will die
In some new horrible agony;
And children here will thrust and poke,
Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke,
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.
Scheme | aaBBccddeeffgghhiijjklmbnnooppqqrrssttiuvvBB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111101 1010101 110100101 1011011 10111011 1111111 1101111 01111101 10111101 11110101 1111101110 10011010 111101111 110011101 1001010 11110011 01110101 1011101 11011111 1011101 1111101 1011101 01111101 011111 01011101 0100011001 11111110 101111 11110101 01011111 1110101 01111101 0111101 1101011 1011101 11110101 1010011 11011011 1010111 011100100 01011101 10101101 110100101 1011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,551 |
Words | 284 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 44 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,215 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 282 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 31, 2023
- 1:25 min read
- 197 Views
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"The Next War" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31192/the-next-war>.
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