The elegy “For the Fallen” by Robert Laurance Binyon has no specifically named addressee. It stands to reason that the poet wanted to address the bereaved of WWI’s fallen, because Binyon expresses the public lament in his poem. Therefore the poetic form of the elegy is appropriate, since it was a common poetic form to express the mournful feelings after loosing a person.
“For the Fallen” consists of seven four-line stanzas with a concrete rhyme pattern. Every second and fourth verse rhyme (abcb defe ghih jklk mnon pqrq stut) and mostly the end of every second line is simultaneously an end to a sentence or clause marked with a full stop. This clause pattern gets interrupted in the last three stanzas that are interrupted through semicolons as well. There are no strict feet because there are likewise feminine and masculine lines. On the one hand it could be said that the feet is iambic, as in “[w]ith proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children” (Binyon), in which every second syllable of this twelve-syllabic masculine line is stressed. On the other hand the feet is anapaestic in which every third syllable is stressed, like in the masculine pentameter “England mourns for her dead across the sea”.
In the first stanza the lyrical I, that remains anonymous, emphasizes the bereaved people’s pride on the fallen of England, who “[w]ith proud thanksgiving” wear mourning. The country, so “England [, in general] mourns”, as the speaker shows. Not only the near family but also the