Analysis of The Dancers: (During A Great Battle, 1916)
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell 1887 (Scarborough) – 1964 (Weedon Lois)
The floors are slippery with blood:
The world gyrates too. God is good
That while His wind blows out the light
For those who hourly die for is –
We still can dance each night.
The music has grown numb with death –
But we will suck their dying breath,
The whispered name they breathed to chance,
To swell our music, make it loud
That we may dance, - may dance.
We are the dull blind carrion-fly
That dance and batten. Though God die
Mad from the horror of the light –
The light is mad, too, flecked with blood, -
We dance, we dance, each night.
| Scheme | AXBXB CCDXD EEBAB |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | |
| Metre | 01110011 0111111 11111101 11110111 111111 01011111 11111101 01011111 111010111 111111 110111001 11010111 11010101 01111111 111111 |
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 543 |
| Words | 109 |
| Sentences | 6 |
| Stanzas | 3 |
| Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5 |
| Lines Amount | 15 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
| Words per line (avg) | 7 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 139 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 32 sec read
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"The Dancers: (During A Great Battle, 1916)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7422/the-dancers%3A-%28during-a-great-battle%2C-1916%29>.
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