Analysis of Mental Cases
Wilfred Owen 1893 (Oswestry) – 1918 (Sambre–Oise Canal)
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
Scheme | AXBXXXXXB AXXCCXXCX XXXXDXCXCD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111111101 11111 1011111110 1011111110 1111111110 111111010 1011101111 10010101110 1001111110 111110111 10010011110 1101110 1011111010 1011111110 111111011 101101011010 100100001010 111111010 1111110 1011101111 110111111 11101011101 111110100100 101111010 1111101110 1010111110 1010111110 1011111010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,316 |
Words | 209 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 10 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 38 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 353 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 69 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 1:03 min read
- 215 Views
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"Mental Cases" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/38520/mental-cases>.
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