A Year's Casualties
Slain as they lay by the secret, slow,Pitiless hand of an unseen foe,Two score thousand old soldiers have crossedThe river to join the loved and lost.In the space of a year their spirits fled,Silent and white, to the camp of the dead.
One after one, they fall asleepAnd the pension agents awake to weep,And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wailAs the souls flit by on the evening gale.O Father of Battles, pray give us releaseFrom the horrors of peace, the horrors of peace!
Words in this poem
- unseen a.
- Not seen or discovered.
- flit a.
- Nimble; quick; swift. See Fleet.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Year's Casualties is in the public domain. This text is taken from Shapes of Clay (1903), Project Gutenberg ebook #12658; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ambrose Bierce, A Year's Casualties, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/a-years-casualties.html, id L28011.
Form and metre
A Year's Casualties is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBCC. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABBCC slowA · foeA · crossedB · lostB · fledC · deadC
- 2 AABBCC asleepA · weepA · wailB · galeB · releaseC · peaceC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Slain as they lay by the secret, slow, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Pitiless hand of an unseen foe, | 9 | /˘˘···˘/· |
| Two score thousand old soldiers have crossed | 10 | ··/˘·/˘··˘ |
| The river to join the loved and lost. | 10 | ·/˘····˘·· |
| In the space of a year their spirits fled, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Silent and white, to the camp of the dead. | 10 | /˘········ |
| One after one, they fall asleep | 8 | ······˘/ |
| And the pension agents awake to weep, | 10 | ··/˘/˘˘/·· |
| And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wail | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| As the souls flit by on the evening gale. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| O Father of Battles, pray give us release | 11 | ·/˘·/˘···˘/ |
| From the horrors of peace, the horrors of peace! | 11 | ··/˘···/˘·· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.