Spring Offensive Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBACD DCEEFF GHIGJG GGKGGLLG MMGHNO OIPPQ RRQSSSSMM| Halted against the shade of a last hill | A |
| They fed and lying easy were at ease | B |
| And finding comfortable chests and knees | B |
| Carelessly slept But many there stood still | A |
| To face the stark blank sky beyond the ridge | C |
| Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world | D |
| - | |
| Marvelling they stood and watched the long grass swirled | D |
| By the May breeze murmurous with wasp and midge | C |
| For though the summer oozed into their veins | E |
| Like the injected drug for their bones' pains | E |
| Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass | F |
| Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass | F |
| - | |
| Hour after hour they ponder the warm field | G |
| And the far valley behind where the buttercups | H |
| Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up | I |
| Where even the little brambles would not yield | G |
| But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands | J |
| They breathe like trees unstirred | G |
| - | |
| Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word | G |
| At which each body and its soul begird | G |
| And tighten them for battle No alarms | K |
| Of bugles no high flags no clamorous haste | G |
| Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced | G |
| The sun like a friend with whom their love is done | L |
| O larger shone that smile against the sun | L |
| Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned | G |
| - | |
| So soon they topped the hill and raced together | M |
| Over an open stretch of herb and heather | M |
| Exposed And instantly the whole sky burned | G |
| With fury against them and soft sudden cups | H |
| Opened in thousands for their blood and the green slopes | N |
| Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space | O |
| - | |
| Of them who running on that last high place | O |
| Leapt to swift unseen bullets or went up | I |
| On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge | P |
| Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge | P |
| Some say God caught them even before they fell | Q |
| - | |
| But what say such as from existence' brink | R |
| Ventured but drave too swift to sink | R |
| The few who rushed in the body to enter hell | Q |
| And there out fiending all its fiends and flames | S |
| With superhuman inhumanities | S |
| Long famous glories immemorial shames | S |
| And crawling slowly back have by degrees | S |
| Regained cool peaceful air in wonder | M |
| Why speak they not of comrades that went under | M |
Wilfred Owen
(2)
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