Twelve Months After
Hullo! here's my platoon, the lot I had last year."The war'll be over soon.""What 'opes?""No bloody fear!"Then, "Number Seven, 'shun! All present and correct."They're standing in the sun, impassive and erect.Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white;Jordan, who's out to win a D.C.M. some night;And Hughes that's keen on wiring; and Davies ('79),Who always must be firing at the Boche front line."Old soldiers never die; they simply fide a-why!"That's what they used to sing along the roads last spring;That's what they used to say before the push began;That's where they are to-day, knocked over to a man.
Words in this poem
- impassive a.
- Not susceptible of pain or suffering; apathetic; impassible; unmoved.
- grin n.
- A snare; a gin. [AS. grin.]
- morgan n.
- One of a celebrated breed of American trotting horses; -- so called from the name of the stud from which the breed originated in Vermont.
- jordan n.
- A pot or vessel with a large neck, formerly used by physicians and alchemists. Halliwell. [Prob. fr. the river Jordan, and shortened fr. Jordan bottle a bottle of water from the Jordan, brought back by pilgrims.]
- wiring n.
- The act of one that wires anything.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Twelve Months After 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, Twelve Months After, in Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8930, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-counter-attack/twelve-months-after.html, id L04696.
Form and metre
Twelve Months After is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.9 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic hexameter.
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--ABBCC----DD yearA · soon · opes · fearA · correctB · erectB · whiteC · nightC · — · line · why · spring · beganD · manD
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Hullo! here's my platoon, the lot I had last year. | 12 | ˘/··˘/······ |
| "The war'll be over soon." | 6 | ······ |
| "What 'opes?" | 2 | ·· |
| "No bloody fear!" | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Then, "Number Seven, 'shun! All present and correct." | 11 | ·/˘/··˘/·˘/ |
| They're standing in the sun, impassive and erect. | 12 | ·/˘···˘/˘·˘/ |
| Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white; | 12 | ·/˘····/˘/·· |
| Jordan, who's out to win a D.C.M. some night; | 12 | /˘·········· |
| And Hughes that's keen on wiring; and Davies ('79), | 10 | ·····/˘·/˘ |
| Who always must be firing at the Boche front line. | 12 | ·/···/˘····· |
| "Old soldiers never die; they simply fide a-why!" | 11 | ·/˘/··/˘··· |
| That's what they used to sing along the roads last spring; | 12 | ······˘/···· |
| That's what they used to say before the push began; | 12 | ··········˘/ |
| That's where they are to-day, knocked over to a man. | 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.