Analysis of 1916 seen from 1921
Edmund Blunden 1896 (London) – 1974 (Long Melford)
Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there—and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags
Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own;
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I seek such neighbours here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.
I rise up at the singing of a bird
And scarcely knowing slink along the lane,
I dare not give a soul a look or word
Where all have homes and none’s at home in vain:
Deep red the rose burned in the grim redoubt,
The self-sown wheat around was like a flood,
In the hot path the lizard lolled time out,
The saints in broken shrines were bright as blood.
Sweet Mary’s shrine between the sycamores!
There we would go, my friend of friends and I,
And snatch long moments from the grudging wars,
Whose dark made light intense to see them by.
Shrewd bit the morning fog, the whining shots
Spun from the wrangling wire: then in warm swoon
The sun hushed all but the cool orchard plots,
We crept in the tall grass and slept till noon.
Scheme | AXAXBCBC DXDXEFEF GHGHIJIJ CBXBKLKL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111110111 110100101 11011101 0111101 0111010101 101110011 0101111101 1101111111 1101111111 0111011011 1111111111 111110111 11110001001 1101010101 10011111101 001110101 1111010101 0101010101 1111010111 1111011101 1101100101 0111011101 0011010111 0101010111 1110101 1111111101 0111010101 1111011111 1101010101 110100101011 0111101101 1100110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,408 |
Words | 271 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 281 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 67 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 21, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 96 Views
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"1916 seen from 1921" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9112/1916-seen-from-1921>.
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