Analysis of A War March
Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis 1876 (Auburn) – 1938 (Melbourne)
Ow! Wow! Wow!
(Funeral note sustained by flutes, suggesting a long-bodied,
short-legged, large-headed dog in anguish.)
Ow! Wow!
We are the people who make the row;
We are the nation that skites and brags;
Marching the goose-step; waving the falgs.
Hoch!
We talk too much, and we lose our block,
We scheme and spy; we plot, we lie
To blow the whoe world into the sky.
The Kaiser spouts, and the Junkers rave.
Hoch! for the Superman, strong and brave!
But what is the use of a Superman,
With 'frightfulness' for his darling plan,
If he has no cities to burn and loot,
No women to ravish, no babies to shoot?
Shall treaties bind us against our wish?
Rip! Swish!
(Violins: Tearing noise as of scraps of paper being destroyed.)
Now at last shall the whole world learn
Of the cult of the Teuton, strong and stern!
Ho! for the Superman running amok!
Hoch!
Um - ta, um - ta, tiddley - um - tum!
(Uncertain note, as of a German band that has been told to move on.)
Pompety - pom pom - tiddeley - um - tum!
Way for the 'blond beasts!' Here they come!
While big guns thunder the nations' doom.
Boom!
Room! Room!
Room for the German! A place in the sun!
He'll play the Devil now he's begun!
Ker-r-r-rump!....Bump!...
(Drums: Noise of an exploding cathedral.)
Ho, the gaping wound and the bleeding stump!
Watch the little ones how they jump!
While we shoot and stab, and plunder and grab,
Spurred by a Kaiser's arrogant gab;
While the Glorious Junker
Grows drunker,
And drunker, on blood.
Blood! Blood!
Sword or cannon or fire or flood,
Never shall stay our conquering feet -
On through city and village street -
Feet that savagely, madly tread,
Over the living; over the dead.
Shoot! Shoot!
Burn and pillage and slay and loot!
To the sound of our guns shall the whole world rock!
Hoch!
Shrieks!
(Flutes, piccolos and trombones render, respectively, the cries of
children, shrieks of women and groans of tortured non-cambatants.
Violins wail mournfully.)
Shrieks! Shrieks!
Hoch der Kaiser! The whole land reeks
With tales of torture and savage rape,
Of fiends and satyrs in human shape;
Fat hands grabbing where white flesh shrinks;
And murdered age to the red earth sinks.
Kill! Kill!
Now at length shall we gorge our fill,
And all shall bow to the German will!
By the maids we ravish our lust to slake,
By the smoking ruin that mark our wake,
By the blood we spill,and the hearths we blast....
This is The Day! The Day at last!....
Praise to God! On our bended knees,
We render thaks for boons like these.
For God and the Kaiser our cohorts flock!
Hoch!
(Scrap of German hymn-tune interpolated here.)
Ach! Donnerwelter! Himmel! Ach!
(Medley of indescribable noises rendered by full orchestra, symbolic,
partly of a German band that is being severely kicked by an irate householder,
and partly innumerable blutwursts suddenly arrested in mid-career.)
Ach! Ach!
'Dot vos not fair to shoot in der back!'
Who is this that as dared to face
Our hosts unconquered, and, pace by pace,
Presses us backward, and ever back.
Over the blasted, desolate rack?
What of the plans we planned so well?
We looked for victory - this is Hell!
Hold! Hold!
Mark the heaps of our comrades bold;
Look on the corpses of Culture's sons -
Martyrs slain by a savage's guns.
Respite now, in this feast of death!
Time! An Armistice! Give us breath!
Nay? Then we cry to the whole wide world,
Shame on our foe for a plea denied!
Savages! Brutes! Barbarians all!
Here shall we fight with our backs to the wall!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
(Ten more thousands gone to their doom.)
Boom!
(Bass drums only, for 679,358 bars, symbolising a prolonged artillery war.
Into this there breaks suddenly the frenzied howl of the long-bodied,
short-legged, large-deaded dog already mentioned.)
Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!
We spit on the British here at our gate!
Foe of humanity! Curst of the world!
On him alone let our hate be hurled!
For his smiling sneers at the Junkers' creed,
For his cold rebuke to a Kaiser's greed;
For his calm disdain of our noble race,
We fling our spite in his scornful face.
Under the sea and high in the air,
Death shall seek for him everywhere;
The lurking death in the submarine,
The swooping death in the air machine,
Alone of them all he had sealed our fate!
Hate! Hate! HATE!
(Prolonged discord, followed by deep, mysterious silence - imposed by censor -
for 793
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111 100101110100110 1101101010 11 110101101 110101101 100111001 1 1111011101 11011111 110110101 01010011 110100101 1110110100 1111101 1111101101 1101111011 1101101101 11 0011011111101001 11110111 101101101 1101001001 1 1111111 01011101011111111 111111 11011111 111100101 1 11 1101001001 110101101 1111 1111010010 1010100101 10101111 1110101001 110101001 1010010 11 0111 11 111011011 1011101001 11100101 11100101 100101001 11 10100101 101110110111 1 1 11001100100011 1011100111011 00111 11 11100111 111100101 11010101 11101111 010110111 11 111111101 011110101 1011110111 10101011101 101110111 11010111 111110101 11011111 11001010101 1 1110111001 11101 1010100101011100010 101010111100101110110 0100100011000100101 11 111111011 11111111 10110111 101100101 100101001 11011111 111100111 11 10111011 110101101 1011011 10101111 11100111 111110111 1110110101 100101001 11111101101 111 11101111 1 111011100101001 01111100010110110 11011101010 1111 11101011101 1101001101 1101110111 111011011 1110110101 11101110101 1110101101 100101001 1111110 01010010 010100101 01111111101 111 0110101101001001110 1 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 4,250 |
Words | 786 |
Sentences | 111 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 24, 28, 22, 22, 22 |
Lines Amount | 118 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 661 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 161 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:57 min read
- 59 Views
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"A War March" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 7 Sep. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/6167/a-war-march>.
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