Analysis of 'In the Pink'

Siegfried Sassoon 1886 (Matfield) – 1967 (Heytesbury)



So Davies wrote: ' This leaves me in the pink. '
Then scrawled his name: ' Your loving sweetheart Willie '
With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink
Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
For once his blood ram warm; he had pay to spend,
Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.

He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark
He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark
In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm
With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
The simple, silly things she liked to hear.

And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die.
And still the war goes on; he don't know why.


Scheme ABABCC DEDEFF GHGHII
Poetic Form
Metre 1101111001 1111110110 1101011101 11010101110 11111111111 1011010111 1101111001 110111101 1111110101 0111110101 1111010001 0101011111 0111110111 11010011110 1111010101 01011010 1110011111 0101111111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 836
Words 160
Sentences 10
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 210
Words per stanza (avg) 53
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

48 sec read
422

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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