Analysis of A Dead Boche

Robert Graves 1895 (Wimbledon) – 1985 (Deià)



To you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
”War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:

Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.


Scheme ABABXX CDCDXX
Poetic Form
Metre 11111111 01011101 11111101 11011101 0111011 01011111 11010101 00111101 10111101 11010101 110111 100111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 462
Words 84
Sentences 3
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 6, 6
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 171
Words per stanza (avg) 41
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

25 sec read
833

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, scholar/translator/writer of antiquity specializing in Classical Greece and Rome, novelist and soldier in World War One. more…

All Robert Graves poems | Robert Graves Books

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