Analysis of Cambrai and Marne
Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts 1860 (Douglas) – 1943 (Toronto)
Before our trenches at Cambrai
We saw their columns cringe away.
We saw their masses melt and reel
Before our line of leaping steel.
A handful to their storming hordes,
We scourged them with the scourge of swords,
And still, the more we slew, the more
Came up for every slain a score.
Between the hedges and the town
The cursing squadrons we rode down;
To stay them we outpoured our blood
Between the beetfields and the wood.
In that red hell of shrieking shell
Unfaltering our gunners fell;
They fell, or ere that day was done,
Beside the last unshattered gun.
But still we held them, like a wall
On which the breakers vainly fall–
Till came the word, and we obeyed,
Reluctant, bleeding, undismayed.
Our feet, astonished, learned retreat;
Our souls rejected still defeat;
Unbroken still, a lion at bay,
We drew back grimly from Cambrai.
In blood and sweat, with slaughter spent,
They thought us beaten as we went,
Till suddenly we turned, and smote
The shout of triumph in their throat.
At last, at last we turned and stood–
And Marne's fair water ran with blood;
We stood by trench and steel and gun,
For now the indignant flight was done.
We ploughed their shaken ranks with fire,
We trod their masses into mire;
Our sabres drove through their retreat
As drives the whirlwind through young wheat.
At last, at last we drove them back
Along their drenched and smoking track;
We hurled them back, in blood and flame,
The reeking ways by which they came.
By cumbered road and desperate ford
How fled their shamed and harassed horde!
Shout, Sons of Freemen, for the day
When Marne so well avenged Cambrai!
Scheme | ABCC DDAA EEFG HHII JJXF KKBA LLFX GFII AAKK MMNN OOBA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (36%) |
Metre | 01101011 11110101 11110101 011011101 0111101 11110111 01011101 111100101 01010001 01010111 11111101 0101001 01111101 110101 11111111 010111 11111101 11010101 11010101 010101 101010101 101010101 010101011 1111011 01011101 11110111 11001101 01110011 11111101 01110111 11110101 110010111 111101110 11110011 101011101 1101111 11111111 01110101 11110101 01011111 1110101 11110011 11110101 1111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,572 |
Words | 288 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 115 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:26 min read
- 98 Views
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"Cambrai and Marne" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/35049/cambrai-and-marne>.
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