Analysis of Banishment

Siegfried Sassoon 1886 (Matfield) – 1967 (Heytesbury)



I am banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.

The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.


Scheme ABBAABBA CDCXDC
Poetic Form
Metre 11101010111 1111110111 1011010111 1101111111 1101010011 110101111 1111010011 1111110101 01011101110 1111011111 011101010 1101111110 1111111111 00110111010
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 647
Words 123
Sentences 8
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 36
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 251
Words per stanza (avg) 60
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

36 sec read
320

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was an eminent English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. He later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston trilogy". more…

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