Glory of Women
You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,Or wounded in a mentionable place.You worship decorations; you believeThat chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.You make us shells. You listen with delight,By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.You crown our distant ardours while we fight,And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.O German mother dreaming by the fire,While you are knitting socks to send your sonHis face is trodden deeper in the mud.
Words in this poem
- mentionable a.
- Fit to be mentioned.
- fondly adv.
- Foolishly. Verstegan (1673).
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Glory of Women is in the public domain. This text is taken from The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, Project Gutenberg ebook #45199; 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, Glory of Women, in The War Poems (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #45199, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-war-poems/glory-of-women.html, id L17254.
Form and metre
Glory of Women is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 14% 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 ABABCDCD leaveA · placeB · believeA · disgraceB · delightC · thrilledD · fightC · killedD
- 2 ABCABC retireA · runB · bloodC · fireA · sonB · mudC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| You love us when we're heroes, home on leave, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Or wounded in a mentionable place. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘˘˘· |
| You worship decorations; you believe | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘·˘/ |
| That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace. | 10 | ·/˘˘˘/··˘/ |
| You make us shells. You listen with delight, | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| You crown our distant ardours while we fight, | 10 | ··//˘/˘··· |
| And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed. | 10 | ··//˘/˘··· |
| You can't believe that British troops "retire" | 10 | ··˘/·/˘·˘/ |
| When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood. | 10 | /˘·/˘/˘··· |
| O German mother dreaming by the fire, | 11 | ·/˘/˘/˘··/˘ |
| While you are knitting socks to send your son | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| His face is trodden deeper in the mud. | 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.