Analysis of Sixteen Dead Men
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
O BUT we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?
You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is their logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony thumb?
how could you dream they'd listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?
Scheme | ABCBDBEFGFHFIJKJCJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111101 001101 11111101 111011 111111001 110101 11111101 110010 11111101 111101 0111011 1101 1111110 111101 1111111 110011 110110101 110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 542 |
Words | 108 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 18 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 434 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 106 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 142 Views
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"Sixteen Dead Men" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39426/sixteen-dead-men>.
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