The Blood-red Fourragere Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAAB CDCCE FGFFH AIAAI IJIIJ IBIIB IIIII CKCCK AIAAI IFIIF ABAAB CFCCCF| What was the blackest sight to me | A |
| Of all that campaign | B |
| A naked woman tied to a tree | A |
| With jagged holes where her breasts should be | A |
| Rotting there in the rain | B |
| - | |
| On we pressed to the battle fray | C |
| Dogged and dour and spent | D |
| Sudden I heard my Captain say | C |
| Voil agrave Kultur has passed this way | C |
| And left us a monument | E |
| - | |
| So I looked and I saw our Colonel there | F |
| And his grand head snowed with the years | G |
| Unto the beat of the rain was bare | F |
| And oh there was grief in his frozen stare | F |
| And his cheeks were stung with tears | H |
| - | |
| Then at last he turned from the woeful tree | A |
| And his face like stone was set | I |
| Go march the Regiment past said he | A |
| That every father and son may see | A |
| And none may ever forget | I |
| - | |
| Oh the crimson strands of her hair downpoured | I |
| Over her breasts of woe | J |
| And our grim old Colonel leaned on his sword | I |
| And the men filed past with their rifles lowered | I |
| Solemn and sad and slow | J |
| - | |
| But I'll never forget till the day I die | I |
| As I stood in the driving rain | B |
| And the jaded columns of men slouched by | I |
| How amazement leapt into every eye | I |
| Then fury and grief and pain | B |
| - | |
| And some would like madmen stand aghast | I |
| With their hands upclenched to the sky | I |
| And some would cross themselves as they passed | I |
| And some would curse in a scalding blast | I |
| And some like children cry | I |
| - | |
| Yea some would be sobbing and some would pray | C |
| And some hurl hateful names | K |
| But the best had never a word to say | C |
| They turned their twitching faces away | C |
| And their eyes were like hot flames | K |
| - | |
| They passed then down on his bended knee | A |
| The Colonel dropped to the Dead | I |
| Poor martyred daughter of France said he | A |
| O dearly dearly avenged you'll be | A |
| Or ever a day be sped | I |
| - | |
| Now they hold that we are the best of the best | I |
| And each of our men may wear | F |
| Like a gash of crimson across his chest | I |
| As one fierce proved in the battle test | I |
| The blood red Fourragere | F |
| - | |
| For each as he leaps to the top can see | A |
| Like an etching of blood on his brain | B |
| A wife or a mother lashed to a tree | A |
| With two black holes where her breasts should be | A |
| Left to rot in the rain | B |
| - | |
| So we fight like fiends and of us they say | C |
| That we neither yield nor spare | F |
| Oh we have the bitterest debt to pay | C |
| Have we paid it Look how we wear to day | C |
| Like a trophy gallant and proud and gay | C |
| Our blood red Fourragere | F |
Robert William Service
(1)
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