The Next War Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIBB JKBBLLMMNNOOPPQQRRIS TTBB| You young friskies who today | A |
| Jump and fight in Father's hay | A |
| With bows and arrows and wooden spears | B |
| Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers | B |
| Happy though these hours you spend | C |
| Have they warned you how games end | C |
| Boys from the first time you prod | D |
| And thrust with spears of curtain rod | D |
| From the first time you tear and slash | E |
| Your long bows from the garden ash | E |
| Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather | F |
| Binding the split tops together | F |
| From that same hour by fate you're bound | G |
| As champions of this stony ground | G |
| Loyal and true in everything | H |
| To serve your Army and your King | H |
| Prepared to starve and sweat and die | I |
| Under some fierce foreign sky | I |
| If only to keep safe those joys | B |
| That belong to British boys | B |
| To keep young Prussians from the soft | J |
| Scented hay of father's loft | K |
| And stop young Slavs from cutting bows | B |
| And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows | B |
| Another War soon gets begun | L |
| A dirtier a more glorious one | L |
| Then boys you'll have to play all in | M |
| It's the cruellest team will win | M |
| So hold your nose against the stink | N |
| And never stop too long to think | N |
| Wars don't change except in name | O |
| The next one must go just the same | O |
| And new foul tricks unguessed before | P |
| Will win and justify this War | P |
| Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage | Q |
| Once more with pomp and greed and rage | Q |
| Courtly ministers will stop | R |
| At home and fight to the last drop | R |
| By the million men will die | I |
| In some new horrible agony | S |
| And children here will thrust and poke | T |
| Shoot and die and laugh at the joke | T |
| With bows and arrows and wooden spears | B |
| Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers | B |
Robert Graves
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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