The Rear-Guard
Groping along the tunnel, step by step,He winked his prying torch with patching glareFrom side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;And he, exploring fifty feet belowThe rosy gloom of battle overhead.
Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lieHumped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug."I'm looking for headquarters." No reply."God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep,)"Get up and guide me through this stinking place."Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,And flashed his beam across the livid faceTerribly glaring up, whose eyes yet woreAgony dying hard ten days before;And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.
Alone he staggered on until he foundDawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stairTo the dazed, muttering creatures undergroundWho hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,Unloading hell behind him step by step.
Words in this poem
- prying a.
- Inspecting closely or impertinently.
- glare v. i.
- To shine with a bright, dazzling light. [OE. glaren, gloren; cf. AS. glær amber, LG. glaren to glow or burn like coals, D. gloren to glimmer; prob. akin to E. glass.]
- mattress n.
- A quilted bed; a bed stuffed with hair, moss, or other suitable material, and quilted or otherwise fastened. [OF. materas, F. matelas, LL. matratium; cf. Sp. & Pg. almadraque, Pr. almatrac; all from Ar. matsrah a place where anything is thrown, what is thrown under some]
- glaring a.
- Clear; notorious; open and bold; barefaced; as, a glaring crime.
- ghost n.
- The spirit; the soul of man. [OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS. gast breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. g spirit, soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.]
- shafted a.
- Furnished with a shaft, or with shafts; as, a shafted arch.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Rear-Guard 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 Rear-Guard, in The War Poems (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #45199, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-war-poems/the-rear-guard.html, id L17236.
Form and metre
The Rear-Guard is 25 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 32% 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 -AA step · glareA · airA
- 2 ABAB knowA · bedB · belowA · overheadB
- 3 ABBACDCDEE- lieA · rugB · tugB · replyA · sleepC · placeD · heapC · faceD · woreE · beforeE · wound
- 4 ABAABB- foundA · stairB · undergroundA · soundA · hairB · airB · step
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Groping along the tunnel, step by step, | 10 | /˘˘/·/˘··· |
| He winked his prying torch with patching glare | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air. | 12 | ············ |
| Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know, | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| And he, exploring fifty feet below | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘··· |
| The rosy gloom of battle overhead. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘/ |
| Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie | 10 | /˘········ |
| Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| "I'm looking for headquarters." No reply. | 10 | ·/˘·/·˘·˘/ |
| "God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep,) | 10 | ·········· |
| "Get up and guide me through this stinking place." | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, | 11 | /˘········· |
| And flashed his beam across the livid face | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore | 10 | /˘˘/˘····· |
| Agony dying hard ten days before; | 10 | /˘˘/˘····· |
| And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Alone he staggered on until he found | 10 | ˘/·/˘····· |
| Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| To the dazed, muttering creatures underground | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
| Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, | 10 | ···/˘··/·· |
| Unloading hell behind him step by step. | 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.