Analysis of A Subaltern
Siegfried Sassoon 1886 (Matfield) – 1967 (Heytesbury)
He turned to me with his kind, sleepy gaze
And fresh face slowly brightening to the grin
That sets my memory back to summer days,
With twenty runs to make, and last man in.
He told me he’d been having a bloody time
In trenches, crouching for the crumps to burst,
While squeaking rats scampered across the slime
And the grey palsied weather did its worst.
But as he stamped and shivered in the rain,
My stale philosophies had served him well;
Dreaming about his girl had sent his brain
Blanker than ever—she’d no place in Hell....
‘Good God!’ he laughed, and slowly filled his pipe,
Wondering ‘why he always talked such tripe’.
Scheme | ABABCDCD EFEFGG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Shakespearean sonnet |
Metre | 1111111101 01110100101 11110011101 1101110110 11111100101 0101010111 1101100101 001110111 1111010001 1101001111 1001111111 111011101 1111010111 100111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 646 |
Words | 116 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 245 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 57 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 34 sec read
- 858 Views
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"A Subaltern" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/34831/a-subaltern>.
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