Ode to the Confederate Dead (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Allen Tate
- First Published: 1928
- Type of Work: Ode
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry, Ode
- Subjects: North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Snakes, Spiders, South or Southerners, Civil War, Death or dying, Gods or goddesses, Heroes or heroism, Soldiers, Mortality, Animals, Confederate States of America, Cemeteries, Owls
The Poem
This ninety-two-line stream-of-consciousness meditation contrasts modern man with the heroes of the Civil War. Originally called an elegy, the poem’s form suggests John Milton’s “Lycidas” (1637), which is at once a lament for the dead Edward King and an examination of life in the 1630’s. Similarly, Allan Tate both eulogizes the fallen Confederate soldiers and analyzes the plight of those living in the twentieth century. Written largely in iambic pentameter, the poem also employs hexameter, tetrameter, and trimeter. The poem oscillates between the regularity...
[The entire page is 1587 words long]
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