Dead Man's Dump Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEF GHIIIJI JKLMNO PQIAACR CCSTU VWGVCCX YVZMA2 CB2C C2D2D2E2F2G2H2 ICI2IJ2C GC LK2K2LLC GCCGL2CM2M2L2 N2CCO2L2P2Q2R2CThe plunging limbers over the shattered track | A |
Racketed with their rusty freight | B |
Stuck out like many crowns of thorns | C |
And the rusty stakes like sceptres old | D |
To stay the flood of brutish men | E |
Upon our brothers dear | F |
- | |
The wheels lurched over sprawled dead | G |
But pained them not though their bones crunched | H |
Their shut mouths made no moan | I |
They lie there huddled friend and foeman | I |
Man born of man and born of woman | I |
And shells go crying over them | J |
From night till night and now | I |
- | |
Earth has waited for them | J |
All the time of their growth | K |
Fretting for their decay | L |
Now she has them at last | M |
In the strength of their strength | N |
Suspended stopped and held | O |
- | |
What fierce imaginings their dark souls lit | P |
Earth have they gone into you | Q |
Somewhere they must have gone | I |
And flung on your hard back | A |
Is their soul's sack | A |
Emptied of God ancestralled essences | C |
Who hurled them out Who hurled | R |
- | |
None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grass | C |
Or stood aside for the half used life to pass | C |
Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth | S |
When the swift iron burning bee | T |
Drained the wild honey of their youth | U |
- | |
What of us who flung on the shrieking pyre | V |
Walk our usual thoughts untouched | W |
Our lucky limbs as on ichor fed | G |
Immortal seeming ever | V |
Perhaps when the flames beat loud on us | C |
A fear may choke in our veins | C |
And the startled blood may stop | X |
- | |
The air is loud with death | Y |
The dark air spurts with fire | V |
The explosions ceaseless are | Z |
Timelessly now some minutes past | M |
Those dead strode time with vigorous life | A2 |
Till the shrapnel called An end ' | - |
But not to all In bleeding pangs | C |
Some borne on stretchers dreamed of home | B2 |
Dear things war blotted from their hearts | C |
- | |
Maniac Earth howling and flying your bowel | C2 |
Seared by the jagged fire the iron love | D2 |
The impetuous storm of savage love | D2 |
Dark Earth dark Heavens swinging in chemic smoke | E2 |
What dead are born when you kiss each soundless soul | F2 |
With lightning and thunder from your mined heart | G2 |
Which man's self dug and his blind fingers loosed | H2 |
- | |
A man's brains splattered on | I |
A stretcher bearer's face | C |
His shook shoulders slipped their load | I2 |
But when they bent to look again | I |
The drowning soul was sunk too deep | J2 |
For human tenderness | C |
- | |
They left this dead with the older dead | G |
Stretched at the cross roads | C |
- | |
Burnt black by strange decay | L |
Their sinister faces lie | K2 |
The lid over each eye | K2 |
The grass and coloured clay | L |
More motion have than they | L |
Joined to the great sunk silences | C |
- | |
Here is one not long dead | G |
His dark hearing caught our far wheels | C |
And the choked soul stretched weak hands | C |
To reach the living word the far wheels said | G |
The blood dazed intelligence beating for light | L2 |
Crying through the suspense of the far torturing wheels | C |
Swift for the end to break | M2 |
Or the wheels to break | M2 |
Cried as the tide of the world broke over his sight | L2 |
- | |
Will they come Will they ever come | N2 |
Even as the mixed hoofs of the mules | C |
The quivering bellied mules | C |
And the rushing wheels all mixed | O2 |
With his tortured upturned sight | L2 |
So we crashed round the bend | P2 |
We heard his weak scream | Q2 |
We heard his very last sound | R2 |
And our wheels grazed his dead face | C |
Isaac Rosenberg
(1)
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