Of Joyce Kilmer and War
Whenever he went to Suffern along the Erie track,
he saw a poor old farmhouse, crumbling, broken, and black.
It touched his deep compassion to see it falling apart,
so, he wrote a poem about it, revealing his tender heart.
He was a man of talent with a selfless, empathic soul.
The many poems and skills he shared proved goodness was his goal.
As a husband and a father, a man just in his prime,
he agreed to join his countrymen to oppose aggressors’ crime.
He caught a sniper’s bullet in a country far away
in a war not of his making. A great man was lost that day.
It was a war so brutal, they said it would end them all.
But, alas, that’s not what happened. Many millions more would fall.
Rich and powerful men from their lofty, sheltered throne,
will sacrifice the lives of others, but will not risk their own
If the men who want to start a war, were the ones who had to go,
we might just see an end to it, and young men could live and grow.
About this poem
When the poem "The House with No One in It" was brought to my attention, it came with the information that it was written shortly before he was killed in WWI. I loved the poem so much I memorized it and then looked up more information about Joyce Kilmer, whom I'd previously known only by his poem," Trees" which I learned in my school days.
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Written on June 26, 2023
Submitted by janet_1 on June 26, 2023
- 1:00 min read
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Quick analysis:
| Scheme | AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH |
|---|---|
| Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
| Characters | 962 |
| Words | 201 |
| Stanzas | 4 |
| Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"Of Joyce Kilmer and War" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/163842/of-joyce-kilmer-and-war>.
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