Autumn
October's bellowing anger breaks and cleavesThe bronzed battalions of the stricken woodIn whose lament I hear a voice that grievesFor battle's fruitless harvest, and the feudOf outraged men. Their lives are like the leavesScattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blownAlong the westering furnace flaring red.O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
Words in this poem
- stricken p. p.
- Struck; smitten; wounded; as, the stricken deer.
- fruitless a.
- Lacking, or not bearing, fruit; barren; destitute of offspring; as, a fruitless tree or shrub; a fruitless marriage.
- westering a.
- Passing to the west.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Autumn is in the public domain. This text is taken from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8930; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Siegfried Sassoon, Autumn, in Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8930, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-counter-attack/autumn.html, id L04715.
Form and metre
Autumn is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 67% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 A-A-ABCBC cleavesA · wood · grievesA · feud · leavesA · blownB · redC · overthrownB · headC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves | 10 | ˘/˘/˘/˘··· |
| The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| For battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves | 10 | ·/········ |
| Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| Along the westering furnace flaring red. | 10 | ˘/·/˘/˘/˘· |
| O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, | 10 | ·/˘··/··˘/ |
| The burden of your wrongs is on my head. | 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.