Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poem is narrated in the third person from the perspective of an omniscient speaker.
Form and Meter
The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet. It is made up of an octave and a sestet written in iambic pentameter.
Metaphors and Similes
The use of metaphor is noted in the weather seasons to describe the different time periods. Spring being the emergence of newness defines Ancient Greece with the glory of summer representing Ancient Rome. With the fall of Rome and the modern era yielding much progress akin to the autumn season.
Alliteration and Assonance
“War broke: and now the Winter of the world / With perishing great darkness closes in.”
Irony
The speaker acknowledges that growth has been abundant in the previous periods yet it has all been brought down by a much more advanced society.
Genre
War poetry
Setting
The poem is set in the Western parts of Europe in 1914.
Tone
Critical; Reminiscent; Somber yet optimistic
Protagonist and Antagonist
The speaker is the protagonist while war specifically the Great War is the antagonist.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is the destruction and barbarism that war has brought down on human civilization destroying the progress made in previous eras.
Climax
The climax reaches when the speaker asserts that human civilization has presently disintegrated compared to the past eras.
Foreshadowing
The poem foreshadows the praise towards Ancient Greece and Rome by recognizing the present society as winter – the fourth season – and the past as spring, summer, and autumn.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
The poem alludes to the historical periods from Ancient Greece into 20th century Europe as human civilization went through changes and progress.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Verse is a synecdoche for poetry.
Personification
“Verse wails”
Hyperbole
“Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin. / The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.”
The speaker uses hyperbole to emphasize the lack of rationality, compassion, affection, and also societal decay in the current state of war.
Onomatopoeia
Blazed is onomatopoeic.