Analysis of Insensibility
Wilfred Owen 1893 (Oswestry) – 1918 (Sambre–Oise Canal)
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers,
But they are troops who fade, not flowers
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling
Losses who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on Armies' decimation.
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
And terror's first constriction over,
Their hearts remain small drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.
We wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood over all our soul,
How should we see our task
But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
Dying, not mortal overmuch;
Nor sad, nor proud,
Nor curious at all.
He cannot tell
Old men's placidity from his.
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears.
Scheme | XXAXAAABBXA BAABXBC CCDEXXFFXXGG CDHHXXXXX EXXAEEXXXA AAXXXXAAAA |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111101111 111111 110101 1111 11010101110 01110 111111110 1101010 11110 101111 1011110 01110 10011101 1011 0101110 011010 1100101001110 1111110100 1011110010 11011101010 110111 1111111111 101111 1111 10110111110 01101010 110111 11001101110 11110 110101001 10010111010 1110011101 010111 1001111101 1111010111 110101 111100111 01010101 1101111 1111011 1101101 1111101 1111011 01111101 101101 1111 110011 1101 11111 111111101 111111 101101 110011010100 11110101 110010101 0101100101 101110111 101 0010010011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,977 |
Words | 351 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 11, 7, 12, 9, 10, 10 |
Lines Amount | 59 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 264 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 57 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 1:46 min read
- 104 Views
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"Insensibility" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/38516/insensibility>.
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