Reconciliation
When you are standing at your hero's grave,Or near some homeless village where he died,Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride,The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.
Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done:And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.But in that Golgotha perhaps you'll findThe mothers of the men who killed your son.
Words in this poem
- homeless a.
- Destitute of a home. [AS.hamleas.]
- golgotha n.
- Calvary. See the Note under Calvary.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Reconciliation 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, Reconciliation, in The War Poems (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #45199, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-war-poems/reconciliation.html, id L17276.
Form and metre
Reconciliation is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 12% 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 ABBA graveA · diedB · prideB · braveA
- 2 ABBA doneA · blindB · findB · sonA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When you are standing at your hero's grave, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Or near some homeless village where he died, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride, | 10 | ˘/˘···˘/˘· |
| The German soldiers who were loyal and brave. | 11 | ·/˘/˘··/˘·· |
| Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind. | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| But in that Golgotha perhaps you'll find | 10 | ···/˘˘˘/·· |
| The mothers of the men who killed your son. | 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.