Analysis of “The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still”
Siegfried Sassoon 1886 (Matfield) – 1967 (Heytesbury)
The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still
And I remember things I'd best forget.
For now we've marched to a green, trenchless land
Twelve miles from battering guns: along the grass
Brown lines of tents are hives for snoring men;
Wide, radiant water sways the floating sky
Below dark, shivering trees. And living-clean
Comes back with thoughts of home and hours of sleep.
To-night I smell the battle; miles away
Gun-thunder leaps and thuds along the ridge;
The spouting shells dig pits in fields of death,
And wounded men, are moaning in the woods.
If any friend be there whom I have loved,
God speed him safe to England with a gash.
It's sundown in the camp; some youngster laughs,
Lifting his mug and drinking health to all
Who come unscathed from that unpitying waste:
(Terror and ruin lurk behind his gaze.)
Another sits with tranquil, musing face,
Puffing bis pipe and dreaming of the girl
Whose last scrawled letter lies upon his knee.
The sunlight falls, low-ruddy from the west,
Upon their heads. Last week they might have died
And now they stretch their limbs in tired content.
One says 'The bloody Bosche has got the knock;
'And soon they'll crumple up and chuck their games.
'We've got the beggars on the run at last!'
Then I remembered someone that I'd seen
Dead in a squalid, miserable ditch,
Heedless of toiling feet that trod him down.
He was a Prussian with a decent face,
Young, fresh, and pleasant, so 1 dare to say.
No doubt he loathed the war and longed for peace,
And cursed our souls because we'd killed bis friends.
One night he yawned along a haIf-dug trench
Midnight; and then the British guns began
With heavy shrapnel bursting low, and 'hows'
Whistling to cut the wire with blinding din.
He didn't move; the digging still went on;
Men stooped and shovelled; someone gave a grunt,
And moaned and died with agony in the sludge.
Then the long hiss of shells lifted and stopped.
He stared into the gloom; a rocket curved,
And rifles rattled angrily on the left
Down by the wood, and there was noise of bombs.
Then the damned English loomed in scrambling haste
Out of the dark and struggled through the wire,
And there were shouts and eurses; someone screamed
And men began to blunder down the trench
Without their rifles. It was time to go:
He grabbed his coat; stood up, gulping some bread;
Then clutched his head and fell.
I found him there
In the gray morning when the place was held.
His face was in the mud; one arm flung out
As when he crumpled up; his sturdy legs
Were bent beneath bis trunk; heels to the skye.
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111110111 0101011101 111110111 11110010101 1111111101 11001010101 01110010101 11111101011 1111010101 1101010101 0101110111 0101110001 1101111111 1111110101 110011101 1011010111 11011111 1001010111 0101110101 1011010101 1111010111 011110101 0111111111 01111101010 1101011101 0111010111 1101010111 110101111 1001010001 111011111 1101010101 110101111 1111010111 01101011111 1111010111 101010101 1101010101 10110101101 1101010111 11011101 01011100001 1011111001 1101010101 01010100101 1101011111 10110101001 11010101010 01010111 0101110101 0111011111 1111111011 111101 1111 0011010111 1110011111 1111011101 0101111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,498 |
Words | 464 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 57 |
Lines Amount | 57 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 2,001 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 460 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 29, 2023
- 2:21 min read
- 164 Views
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