Battle Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AB CDCD EFEF DGDG DHDI JKJL M DDNNOO PFIQRQQSSTTUU PPVVDDWWDDPFQQX Y DDQ ZZ A2A2ZZ QQB2HDDD UUC2C2ZZA | |
Noon | B |
- | |
It is midday the deep trench glares | C |
A buzz and blaze of flies | D |
The hot wind puffs the giddy airs | C |
The great sun rakes the skies | D |
- | |
No sound in all the stagnant trench | E |
Where forty standing men | F |
Endure the sweat and grit and stench | E |
Like cattle in a pen | F |
- | |
Sometimes a sniper's bullet whirs | D |
Or twangs the whining wire | G |
Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs | D |
As in hell's frying fire | G |
- | |
From out a high cool cloud descends | D |
An aeroplane's far moan | H |
The sun strikes down the thin cloud rends | D |
The black speck travels on | I |
- | |
And sweating dazed isolate | J |
In the hot trench beneath | K |
We bide the next shrewd move of fate | J |
Be it of life or death | L |
- | |
- | |
Night Bombardment | M |
- | |
- | |
Softly in the silence the evening rain descends | D |
The soft wind lifts the rain mist flurries it and spends | D |
Itself in mournful sighs drifting from field to field | N |
Soaking the draggled sprays which the low hedges wield | N |
As they labour in the wet and the load of the wind | O |
The last light is dimming Night comes on behind | O |
- | |
I hear no sound but the wind and the rain | P |
And trample of horses loud and lost again | F |
Where the wagons in the mist rumble dimly on | I |
Bringing more shell | Q |
The last gleam is gone | R |
It is not day or night only the mists unroll | Q |
And blind with their sorrow the sight of my soul | Q |
I hear the wind weeping in the hollow overhead | S |
She goes searching for the forgotten dead | S |
Hidden in the hedges or trodden into muck | T |
Under the trenches or maybe limply stuck | T |
Somewhere in the branches of a high lonely tree | U |
He was a sniper once They never found his body | U |
- | |
I see the mist drifting I hear the wind the rain | P |
And on my clammy face the oozed breath of the slain | P |
Seems to be blowing Almost I have heard | V |
In the shuddering drift the lost dead's last word | V |
Go home go home go to my house | D |
Knock at the door knock hard arouse | D |
My wife and the children that you must do | W |
What d' you say Tell the children too | W |
Knock at the door knock hard and arouse | D |
The living Say the dead won't come back to this house | D |
Oh but it's cold I soak in the rain | P |
Shrapnel found me I shan't go home again | F |
No not home again The mourning voices trail | Q |
Away into rain into darkness the pale | Q |
Soughing of the night drifts on in between | X |
- | |
The Voices were as if the dead had never been | Y |
- | |
O melancholy heavens O melancholy fields | D |
The glad full darkness grows complete and shields | D |
Me from your appeal | Q |
- | |
With a terrible delight | Z |
I hear far guns low like oxen at the night | Z |
- | |
Flames disrupt the sky The work is begun | A2 |
'Action ' My guns crash flame rock and stun | A2 |
Again and again Soon the soughing night | Z |
Is loud with their clamour and leaps with their light | Z |
- | |
The imperative chorus rises sonorous and fell | Q |
My heart glows lighted as by fires of hell | Q |
Sharply I pass the terse orders down | B2 |
The guns stun and rock The hissing rain is blown | H |
Athwart the hurtling shell that shrilling shrilling goes | D |
Away into the dark to burst a cloud of rose | D |
Over their trenches | D |
- | |
A pause I stand and see | U |
Lifting into the night like founts incessantly | U |
The pistol lights' pale spores upon the glimmering air | C2 |
Under them furrowed trenches empty pallid bare | C2 |
And rain snowing trenchward ghostly and white | Z |
O dead in the hedges sleep ye well to night | Z |
Robert Nichols
(1)
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