The next stanza starts off with alliterative "w" sounds; "Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,". This makes us sense the wind and the crazy environment around the soldiers. Furthermore, the word "mad" personifies the gusts, seeing them as insane and violent. The next line, "Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles" evokes an image of many men being caught on wires and dying painfully. The silent "r" sounds in "flickering gunnery rumbles" create an onomatopoeic effect of rattling guns and warfare. Also, it reminds the readers of stroboscopic lights and flickering films in the early 1900s. The alliterative "n" and "m" sounds in this phrase make us think that the soldiers are far away from home and create a surreal landscape of imagination; it has a muted effect. In the penultimate line, short words are used "Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war". This produces a sharp effect that gives a stabbing feeling. The stanza finishes with a rhetorical question "What are we doing here", which is questioning the soldiers, why are they dying in war when they could be home with their families.
The third stanza starts with "The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…". This is a metaphorical way of saying that the suffering of the soldiers is beginning. The three dots at the end of this line indicate a pause and a sense of fear by the soldiers, which are continuously waiting for something to happen. In the next line, "We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy". The sibilance in this line forms a heavy and oppressive tone that makes this line flow." Then, Owen continues by describing the 'attack of nature'; "Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army/ Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray". This metaphor shows that "dawn" is attacking the British soldiers and the clouds could represent the lines of the Germans. The enjambment of the two lines creates a quickness which we can relate to the attack. Moreover, the violent "k" sounds in "Attacks", "ranks" and again "ranks" make the war-scenery sound more dramatic and emphasize a dying scene of natural dominance.
The last stanza of the first half of the poem starts off with "Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence". The sibilant "s" sounds in this line evoke the speed and the sound of striking bullets. The trembling air is then personified in the next line, which says "Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow". The air is shaking so much that is seems like it is "shudder[ing]" like shockwaves.
The second part of the poem continues with "Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces -". This metaphor shows how nature is coming closer up to the men's faces, trying to destroy them. Furthermore, the silent "f" sounds add a surreptitious quality to the snowflakes, which makes them sound attracted to the soldiers in a violent way. The dash at the end of the line indicates a pause, which could be so emphasize the suffering soldiers and the pain they had to withstand. The soldiers "stare, snow dazed", which shows a far-away look on the dying men's faces, looking back into memories of the past. Moreover, the words "dazed", "drowse" and "dozed" have a hypnotising effect and make us think of comics where people are sleeping using "Zzz" in the speech bubble. The soldiers are completely in their dreams as Owen says "trickling where the black-bird fusses". The men are remembering things from the past and are forgetting the real world. The last line in the poem is again a rhetorical question "It is that we are dying?". This ends the last clear images of the past and is questioning the men: Is it what we dream of maybe not reality?
The next stanza starts with "Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed/ With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there" The fact that the "ghosts" are "drag[ging] home" shows that the soldiers are desperate to get back to their families and want to rewind time if possible. Also, the "sunk fires" metaphorically mean that life is over and that the soldiers are dead. The "dark-red jewels" seems to be the soldiers' blood that is being illustrated metaphorically. The crickets are supposed to be a symbol of death in some cultures, which could be why he said that they "jingle here", in heaven. The phrase "doors are closed" is repeated twice in one line, which emphasises that life is over and there is no coming back. It is the beginning of an end. The last phrase of this stanza goes "We turn back to our dying". This shows the realisation of the soldiers that they are not in a dream-world anymore and that they are really dying.
In stanza 7, each line starts with a logical argument that is not really there "since…", "For…", "Therefore…". This is ironic as there is no logical explanation for war. The last statement in this line of this stanza says "For love of God seems dying". This is very ambiguous as soldiers lose love for God or God loses love for soldiers.
The last stanza starts with "Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us". The sibilant "s" sounds in the words "frost" and "fasten" emphasise the drying and freezing and seems that the soldiers became part of the cold nature. The bodies are described as "shrivelling" and "puckering", which reminds us of old people and wrinkling skin, emphasizing dryness and old age, and even death. In the penultimate line of the poem, there is a half-rhyme as Owen mentions that "All their eyes are ice". This metaphor shows that what used to be the eyes of the soldiers have frozen to ice-balls. Also, the freezing together and the use of them as a half-rhyme add to the fact that the soldiers were nameless and the word "all" mean that there were many of them that all looked the same. The last line of the poem is again the first of the last line in stanza 1 saying, "But nothing happens". The way it is repeated in the poem shows that it is very tragic and that war is allowed to continue and people will carry on dying in the same, dreadful way as they did before.
The poem is written in a very open structure with the eight stanzas all being equal, which could represent soldiers in war, all being the same and unidentified. There are many spaces in between each stanza and line, emphasizing the waiting of the soldiers and the agony of the men during war. The poem described the effect of climate in war in a very descriptive and emotional way and grabbed us, as readers, very much, like in any other of Wilfred Owens's war poems.
