A Year's Casualties
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
Slain as they lay by the secret, slow,
Pitiless hand of an unseen foe,
Two score thousand old soldiers have crossed
The river to join the loved and lost.
In the space of a year their spirits fled,
Silent and white, to the camp of the dead.
One after one, they fall asleep
And the pension agents awake to weep,
And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wail
As the souls flit by on the evening gale.
O Father of Battles, pray give us release
From the horrors of peace, the horrors of peace!
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 28 sec read
- 381 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABBCC DDEEFF |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 485 |
Words | 96 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6 |
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"A Year's Casualties" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/1678/a-year's-casualties>.
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