The Battle of Blenheim

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1798

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

The poem consists of modified ballad stanzas. Traditionally, the ballad stanza consists of four lines, a quatrain. Southey adds a rhyming couplet to the quatrain, to create a stanza of six lines rather than four.

The meter is traditional ballad meter. Thus the first and third lines in each stanza are iambic tetrameters. An iambic foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, and a tetrameter consists of four iambic feet. These tetrameters alternate with iambic trimeter (three poetic feet) in the second and fourth lines of each stanza. The first four lines of Stanza 1 therefore scan as follows:

It was a summer evening,

Old Kaspar’s work was done,

And he before his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun (Lines 1-4).

Then follows a rhyming couplet to complete the stanza, which is Southey’s modification of the ballad stanza. The meter is also different, since both lines of the couplet are tetrameters: “And by him sported on the green / His little grandchild Wilhelmine” (Lines 5-6).

An exception to the regularity of the meter can be found in the first two lines of Stanza 4: “I find them in the garden, / For there’s many here about” (Lines 19-20), in which the expected tetrameter (from the first line) is one syllable short and the expected trimeter that follows (in the second line) has one extra syllable, so these lines are of equal length.

Rhyme

The rhyme scheme follows the traditional ballad stanza, in which the second line rhymes with the fourth line. For example:

‘Now tell us what ‘twas all about,’

Young Peterkin, he cries;

And little Wilhelmine looks up

With wonder-waiting eyes (Lines 25-28).

The concluding couplet in each stanza has its own rhyme, so the rhyme scheme of each stanza is ABCBDD.

Alliteration and Repetition

Alliteration is a literary device that features the repetition of initial consonants in words that are adjacent to each other or close together. Alliteration is common in ballads—many of which are songs—partly because it makes them easier to remember. It also adds to the poem’s verbal and imaginative appeal, especially if read aloud. There are a number of examples in the poem: “sitting in the sun” (Line 4); “And little Wilhelmine looks up / With wonder-waiting eyes” (Lines 27-28); “what they fought each other for” (Line 30); “And he was forced to fly” (Line 40); “Was wasted far and wide” (Line 44), and “They say it was a shocking sight” (Line 49).

Alliteration is a form of repetition, although ballads often use a much more thoroughgoing repetition, of whole lines or phrases. These form a refrain at the end of a stanza, which is repeated in other stanzas. There is a refrain in seven stanzas of Southey’s poem, all of which refer to either a “great victory” (Stanzas 3, 4) or a “famous victory” (Stanzas 6, 8, 9, 10, 11). The refrain becomes more frequent in the latter half of the poem.