Weeping
"Do not weep." You'll hear that again and again in this poem because it's part of the refrain. But it's more than that, of course. Weeping is what people do when they lose somebody they love, so it...
Death
War is death. That's pretty much a cold hard fact. And in a poem about war, we expect there to be plenty of death. And there's plenty o' death in this baby. The maiden's lover, the babe's father, t...
War Imagery
So, this is a poem about war, right? Yes sir. War stuff is just plain all over the place in these lines. Trenches, flags, death, violence, soldiers—it's all crammed into this one little poem. And...