Insensibility Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDEDDDFFGD A FDDFHFI A IIJKLMNNOPQQ IJRRSTUVW TXYDTTZA2B2D DDC2 D2E2DDDD| I | A |
| - | |
| Happy are men who yet before they are killed | B |
| Can let their veins run cold | C |
| Whom no compassion fleers | D |
| Or makes their feet | E |
| Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers | D |
| The front line withers | D |
| But they are troops who fade not flowers | D |
| For poets' tearful fooling | F |
| Men gaps for filling | F |
| Losses who might have fought | G |
| Longer but no one bothers | D |
| - | |
| II | A |
| - | |
| And some cease feeling | F |
| Even themselves or for themselves | D |
| Dullness best solves | D |
| The tease and doubt of shelling | F |
| And Chance's strange arithmetic | H |
| Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling | F |
| They keep no check on Armies' decimation | I |
| - | |
| III | A |
| - | |
| Happy are these who lose imagination | I |
| They have enough to carry with ammunition | I |
| Their spirit drags no pack | J |
| Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache | K |
| Having seen all things red | L |
| Their eyes are rid | M |
| Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever | N |
| And terror's first constriction over | N |
| Their hearts remain small drawn | O |
| Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle | P |
| Now long since ironed | Q |
| Can laugh among the dying unconcerned | Q |
| - | |
| IV | - |
| - | |
| Happy the soldier home with not a notion | I |
| How somewhere every dawn some men attack | J |
| And many sighs are drained | R |
| Happy the lad whose mind was never trained | R |
| His days are worth forgetting more than not | S |
| He sings along the march | T |
| Which we march taciturn because of dusk | U |
| The long forlorn relentless trend | V |
| From larger day to huger night | W |
| - | |
| V | - |
| - | |
| We wise who with a thought besmirch | T |
| Blood over all our soul | X |
| How should we see our task | Y |
| But through his blunt and lashless eyes | D |
| Alive he is not vital overmuch | T |
| Dying not mortal overmuch | T |
| Nor sad nor proud | Z |
| Nor curious at all | A2 |
| He cannot tell | B2 |
| Old men's placidity from his | D |
| - | |
| VI | - |
| - | |
| But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns | D |
| That they should be as stones | D |
| Wretched are they and mean | C2 |
| With paucity that never was simplicity | - |
| By choice they made themselves immune | D2 |
| To pity and whatever mourns in man | E2 |
| Before the last sea and the hapless stars | D |
| Whatever mourns when many leave these shores | D |
| Whatever shares | D |
| The eternal reciprocity of tears | D |
Wilfred Owen
(1)
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