The Kiss
To these I turn, in these I trust;Brother Lead and Sister Steel.To his blind power I make appeal;I guard her beauty clean from rust.
He spins and burns and loves the air,And splits a skull to win my praise;But up the nobly marching daysShe glitters naked, cold and fair.
Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this;That in good fury he may feelThe body where he sets his heelQuail from your downward darting kiss.
Words in this poem
- nobly adv.
- Of noble extraction; as, nobly born or descended.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Kiss 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, The Kiss, in The War Poems (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #45199, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-war-poems/the-kiss.html, id L17261.
Form and metre
The Kiss is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic 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 ABBA trustA · steelB · appealB · rustA
- 2 ABBA airA · praiseB · daysB · fairA
- 3 ABBA thisA · feelB · heelB · kissA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| To these I turn, in these I trust; | 8 | ········ |
| Brother Lead and Sister Steel. | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| To his blind power I make appeal; | 8 | ···/··˘/ |
| I guard her beauty clean from rust. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| He spins and burns and loves the air, | 8 | ········ |
| And splits a skull to win my praise; | 8 | ········ |
| But up the nobly marching days | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| She glitters naked, cold and fair. | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this; | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| That in good fury he may feel | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The body where he sets his heel | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Quail from your downward darting kiss. | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
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.