Analysis of The Grave of the Hundred Heads
Rudyard Kipling 1865 (Mumbai) – 1936 (London)
There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun,
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.
A Snider squibbed in the jungle,
Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris
Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead
And the back blown out of his head.
Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Jemadar Hira Lal,
Took command of the party,
Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
As the day was beginning to fall.
They buried the boy by the river,
A blanket over his face --
They wept for their dead Lieutenant,
The men of an alien race --
They made a samadh in his honor,
A mark for his resting-place.
For they swore by the Holy Water,
They swore by the salt they ate,
That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib
Should go to his God in state;
With fifty file of Burman
To open him Heaven's gate.
The men of the First Shikaris
Marched till the break of day,
Till they came to the rebel village,
The village of Pabengmay --
A jingal covered the clearing,
Calthrops hampered the way.
Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Bidding them load with ball,
Halted a dozen rifles
Under the village wall;
Sent out a flanking-party
With Jemadar Hira Lal.
The men of the First Shikaris
Shouted and smote and slew,
Turning the grinning jingal
On to the howling crew.
The Jemadar's flanking-party
Butchered the folk who flew.
Long was the morn of slaughter,
Long was the list of slain,
Five score heads were taken,
Five score heads and twain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back to their grave again,
Each man bearing a basket
Red as his palms that day,
Red as the blazing village --
The village of Pabengmay,
And the "drip-drip-drip" from the baskets
Reddened the grass by the way.
They made a pile of their trophies
High as a tall man's chin,
Head upon head distorted,
Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.
Subadar Prag Tewarri
Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph,
The head of his son below,
With the sword and the peacock-banner
That the world might behold and know.
Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris --
The price of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.
Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For he Burmans said
That a kullah's head
Must be paid for with heads five score.
There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun,
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.
Scheme | ABABAB cdEddd Afghah aexeae aijibi EklMxk Ahehgf Encngn aoboEp xklMek eqrqaq Ajxsas xoeoEp atrtddt ABABAB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101001010 1110101 10110110 0110101 01111 1110111 01010010 10101 0011011 11111 101110110 00111111 111 111 1011010 101001 1111010 101101011 110011010 0101011 11111010 01111001 11010110 0111101 111101010 1110111 101101011 1111101 1101110 1101101 011011 110111 111101010 01011 0110010 11001 111 101111 1001010 100101 1101010 1111 011011 100101 100101 110101 011010 100111 1101110 110111 111010 11101 0011011 1111101 1110010 111111 1101010 01011 001111010 101101 11011110 110111 1011010 10011 1001010 110111 111 101101 101101110 0111101 10100110 10110101 101101 110101 1011011 0110111 0011011 1101101 101011010 0111001 01101010 01111 11101 1011 11111111 101001010 1110101 10110110 0110101 01111 1110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,661 |
Words | 516 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 15 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 6 |
Lines Amount | 91 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 143 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 34 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 2:37 min read
- 246 Views
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