Dead Man's Dump Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEF GHIIIJI JKLMNO PQIAACR CCSTU VWGVCCX YVZMA2B2CC2C ICD2IE2C GCLF2F2LLC GCCGG2CH2H2G2 I2CCJ2G2B2K2L2C

The plunging limbers over the shattered trackA
Racketed with their rusty freightB
Stuck out like many crowns of thornsC
And the rusty stakes like sceptres oldD
To stay the flood of brutish menE
Upon our brothers dearF
-
The wheels lurched over sprawled deadG
But pained them not though their bones crunchedH
Their shut mouths made no moanI
They lie there huddled friend and foemanI
Man born of man and born of womanI
And shells go crying over themJ
From night till night and nowI
-
Earth has waited for themJ
All the time of their growthK
Fretting for their decayL
Now she has them at lastM
In the strength of her strengthN
Suspended stopped and heldO
-
What fierce imaginings their dark souls litP
Earth Have they gone into youQ
Somewhere they must have goneI
And flung on your hard backA
Is their souls' sackA
Emptied of God ancestralled essencesC
Who hurled them out Who hurledR
-
None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grassC
Or stood aside for the half used life to passC
Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouthS
When the swift iron burning beeT
Drained the wild honey of their youthU
-
What of us who flung on the shrieking pyreV
Walk our usual thoughts untouchedW
Our lucky limbs as on ichor fedG
Immortal seeming everV
Perhaps when the flames beat loud on usC
A fear may choke in our veinsC
And the startled blood may stopX
-
The air is loud with deathY
The dark air spurts with fireV
The explosions ceaseless areZ
Timelessly now some minutes pastM
These dead strode time with vigorous lifeA2
Till the shrapnel called an endB2
But not to all In bleeding pangsC
Some borne on stretchers dreamed of homeC2
Dear things war blotted from their heartsC
-
A man's brains splattered onI
A stretcher bearer's faceC
His shook shoulders slipped their loadD2
But when they bent to look againI
The drowning soul was sunk too deepE2
For human tendernessC
-
They left this dead with the older deadG
Stretched at the cross roadsC
Burnt black by strange decayL
Their sinister faces lieF2
The lid over each eyeF2
The grass and coloured clayL
More motion have than theyL
Joined to the great sunk silencesC
-
Here is one not long deadG
His dark hearing caught our far wheelsC
And the choked soul stretched weak handsC
To reach the living word the far wheels saidG
The blood dazed intelligence beating for lightG2
Crying through the suspense of the far torturing wheelsC
Swift for the end to breakH2
Or the wheels to breakH2
Cried as the tide of the world broke over his sightG2
-
Will they come Will they ever comeI2
Even as the mixed hoofs of the mulesC
The quivering bellied mulesC
And the rushing wheels all mixedJ2
With his tortured upturned sightG2
So we crashed round the bendB2
We heard his weak screamK2
We heard his very last soundL2
And our wheels grazed his dead faceC

Isaac Rosenberg



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