Analysis of The Troops
Siegfried Sassoon 1886 (Matfield) – 1967 (Heytesbury)
Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew
Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.
Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them where they endure
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.
Scheme | AXXBXXXX XXXXXBXXA XXXXXXXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11001010101 1011001101 11111101 0111010101 10010111101 0101111101 101000111 100010101111 1111111101 1111110101 00110101101 1111000111 1111010111 11001010101 1101011101 1101010101 010111111 1111010111 11000100101 1011110101 1111001111 111111 011110111 0100010111 0110111 0101110011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,172 |
Words | 199 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 9, 9 |
Lines Amount | 26 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 314 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 66 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 59 sec read
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"The Troops" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/34967/the-troops>.
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