The Vindictive Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AB CDD ECFF GCHH ICJJ CCCC KCLM CCNN CCMOPCQQ ECPP CCRR STGG MTGG MTUU MTVV BCDD| How should we praise those lads of the old | A |
| Vindictive | B |
| - | |
| Who looked Death straight in the eyes | C |
| Till his gaze fell | D |
| In those red gates of hell | D |
| - | |
| England in her proud history proudly enrolls them | E |
| And the deep night in her remembering skies | C |
| With purer glory | F |
| Shall blazon their grim story | F |
| - | |
| There were no throngs to applaud that hushed adventure | G |
| They were one to a thousand on that fierce emprise | C |
| The shores they sought | H |
| Were armoured past all thought | H |
| - | |
| O they knew fear be assured as the brave must know it | I |
| With youth and its happiness bidding their last good byes | C |
| Till thoughts more dear | J |
| Than life cast out all fear | J |
| - | |
| For if as we think they remembered the brown roofed homesteads | C |
| And the scent of the hawthorn hedges when daylight dies | C |
| Old happy places | C |
| Young eyes and fading faces | C |
| - | |
| One dream was dearer that night than the best of their boyhood | K |
| One hope more radiant than any their hearts could prize | C |
| The touch of your hand | L |
| The light of your face England | M |
| - | |
| So age to age shall tell how they sailed through the darkness | C |
| Where under those high austere implacable stars | C |
| Not one in ten | N |
| Might look for a dawn again | N |
| - | |
| They saw the ferry boats | C |
| Iris | C |
| and | M |
| Daffodil | O |
| creeping | P |
| Darkly as clouds to the shimmering mine strewn bars | C |
| Flash into light | Q |
| Then thunder reddened the night | Q |
| - | |
| The wild white swords of the search lights blinded and stabbed them | E |
| The sharp black shadows fought in fantastic wars | C |
| Black waves leapt whitening | P |
| Red decks were washed with lightning | P |
| - | |
| But under the twelve inch guns of the black land batteries | C |
| The hacked bright hulk in a glory of crackling spars | C |
| Moved to her goal | R |
| Like an immortal soul | R |
| - | |
| That while the raw rent flesh in a furnace is tortured | S |
| Reigns by a law no agony ever can shake | T |
| And shines in power | G |
| Above all shocks of the hour | G |
| - | |
| O there while the decks ran blood and the star shells lightened | M |
| The old broken ship that the enemy never could break | T |
| Swept through the fire | G |
| And grappled her heart's desire | G |
| - | |
| There on a wreck that blazed with the soul of England | M |
| The lads that died in the dark for England's sake | T |
| Knew as they died | U |
| Nelson was at their side | U |
| - | |
| Nelson and all the ghostly fleets of his island | M |
| Fighting beside them there and the soul of Drake | T |
| Dreams as we knew | V |
| Till these lads made them true | V |
| - | |
| How should we praise you lads of the old Vindictive | B |
| Who looked death straight in the eyes | C |
| Till his gaze fell | D |
| In those red gates of hell | D |
Alfred Noyes
(1)
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