For The Fallen Poem Analysis

Explication of Robert Binyon’s “For The Fallen”

“For The Fallen” by Robert Binyon is about our fallen servicemen and servicewomen who fought for us. Describing how we will not see them again and how they will not be returning home.

This poem is a quatrain poem with seven stanzas, in every stanza lines two and four rhyme, the remainder do not. The first stanza tells the readers about the soldiers dying and the families mourning. The second stanza talks about the hardness of grieving. The third stanza describes the actual death of the fallen. Next in stanza number four we are told that the fallen will not grow old as we do. Enforcing the sadness of this poem. Stanza number five continues on with what the dead will miss in life, making the reader feel gratitude for all that we have. The second last stanza tells us that the fallen knows how grateful we

are to them. Which to me is a relief, for I always worry they think of us as selfish when we take what we have for granted. The final stanza conveys that the dead will always be dead, and that we cannot change their fate. They remain, in that state. Making the reader feel desperate for the people that have been lost.

To achieve the mood and theme of sadness and longing the poet uses many devices, to start he uses dramatic irony throughout the poem. We are never told that this poem is about war, but the poet drops hints to ensure that we know what he is trying to convey. The poet also uses lots of words that are euphonys such as “laughter,” “stars,” or “heart.” This makes us feel lost, if the poet was to use chacophonys instead the readers would feel angry at the loss of the fallen, instead we feel as if we are lost. Employing sadness and a longing for those that died. The lines “Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,” uses a hyperbole, the solemn is not actually singing sorrow to us, but it helps create the mood for this poem. Robert Binyon uses many devices to make us feel many undesirable moods, such as loneliness, sadness and regret. He does this through the use of euphonys, hyperboles and dramatic irony.

I chose this poem to be in my anthology because I wanted the people who read it to be truly grateful for those who died.

Nothing makes me more angry then people disrespecting the dead. The soldiers paid the ultimate sacrifice when they gave their lives for us. This poem puts those who read it into the shoes of the grieving loved ones. It makes them understand what the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters of the warriors went through. One other reason is that it made me realize how my life would be if I lost my brother to war. That thought scares me more then anything on this earth. This is why “For the Fallen” by Robert Binyon is included in my anthology.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and

aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.