Analysis of A DAY IN HELL
They say that war is Hell
And no-one good survives,
Who can exist a day in Hell?
Where nothing decent thrives.
Good men go to fight and die
But bad men start the wars,
Evil profit mongers cash in
While the decent die in scores.
Sadistic profiteers rejoice
Making fortunes selling weapons,
Fine men go to be slaughtered
As the Reaper's finger beckons.
Foul old men sitting at home
Sending their grandsons out to die,
A day, a month, a year in Hell
It's all the same to boys who cry.
Evil elders control the lives
Of youngsters sent off to war,
To fight the Carmies? Or Nazis?
No-one really knows what for.
Burning corpses fill the land
Human ashes fill the sky,
The good hiding underground
While war-mongers live on high.
The game of death goes ever on
Racketeers depending on it,
Gambling with the lives of men
All in the Godless name of profit.
A day in Hell can last twenty years
As soldiers are dying for naught,
Just take the profit out of war
So no more wars will ever be fought.
THE END
© Copyright 2022 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| Scheme | ABAB CDXD XEXE XCAC XFXF XCXC XXXX XGFG XXX |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
| Metre | 111111 011101 11010101 110101 1111101 111101 10101010 1010101 0100101 10101010 1111110 1011010 1111011 1011111 01010101 11011111 10100101 1101111 1101110 1110111 1010101 1010101 011010 1110111 01111101 0101011 10010111 100101110 010111101 11011011 11010111 111111011 01 101010 100100010 |
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 1,066 |
| Words | 221 |
| Sentences | 12 |
| Stanzas | 9 |
| Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3 |
| Lines Amount | 35 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
| Words per line (avg) | 6 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 92 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
About this poem
I remember the saddest day of my life, when I was nine or ten. When I learnt the most obscene thing I've ever heard. That private companies are allowed to make weapons of war for profit. Despite being unemotional as a rule, I cried out loud when I heard this. I still believe that if the UN passed a worldwide law that only governments could own factories making weapons of war, that war would virtually end. History is resplendent with examples of private companies giving millions of dollars worth of weapons to small nations, then grossly overcharging the big nations, to keep what should have been short wars going for years, so they could grow fat on the profits of death!
Written on May 10, 2022
Submitted by philip0157 on May 14, 2022
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:06 min read
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"A DAY IN HELL" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 24 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/127562/a-day-in-hell>.
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