The Last Post
The bugler sent a call of high romance--"Lights out! Lights out!" to the deserted square.On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer,"God, if it's this for me next time in France ...O spare the phantom bugle as I lieDead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,Dead in a row with the other broken onesLying so stiff and still under the sky,Jolly young Fusiliers too good to die."
Words in this poem
- bugler n.
- One who plays on a bugle.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Last Post is in the public domain. This text is taken from Fairies and Fusiliers, Project Gutenberg ebook #10122; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Graves, The Last Post, in Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10122, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/graves-fairies/the-last-post.html, id L02424.
Form and metre
The Last Post is 9 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 22% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 ABBACDDCC romanceA · squareB · prayerB · franceA · lieC · gunsD · onesD · skyC · dieC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The bugler sent a call of high romance-- | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| "Lights out! Lights out!" to the deserted square. | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| "God, if it's this for me next time in France ... | 10 | ·········· |
| O spare the phantom bugle as I lie | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns, | 10 | ·········· |
| Dead in a row with the other broken ones | 11 | ······/˘/˘· |
| Lying so stiff and still under the sky, | 10 | /˘········ |
| Jolly young Fusiliers too good to die." | 10 | /˘········ |
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.