The General
"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General saidWhen we met him last week on our way to the line.Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine."He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to JackAs they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
Words in this poem
- harry v. i.
- To make a predatory incursion; to plunder or lay waste.
- arras n.
- Tapestry; a rich figured fabric; especially, a screen or hangings of heavy cloth with interwoven figures. [From Arras the capital of Artois, in the French Netherlands.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The General 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, The General, in Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8930, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-counter-attack/the-general.html, id L04699.
Form and metre
The General is 7 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCCC. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 11.6 syllables.
See other poems in anapaestic tetrameter.
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 ABABCCC saidA · lineB · deadA · swineB · jackC · packC · attackC
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 anapaestic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| "Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said | 10 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘· |
| When we met him last week on our way to the line. | 12 | ·······/···· |
| Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead, | 12 | ··/˘········ |
| And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine. | 11 | ··/˘···˘/˘· |
| "He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack | 12 | ··/˘··/˘/˘·· |
| As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. | 12 | ·····/˘·/˘·· |
| But he did for them both by his plan of attack. | 12 | ··········˘/ |
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.