Extempore - Analysis

Cheerful defiance as self-talk

The poem reads like a quick pep talk the speaker gives himself when he feels the pull of worry. He begins with a blunt, comic challenge: why the deuce should he repine and become an ill foreboder. That old-fashioned oath and the Scots plainness of the phrasing make the mood brisk rather than lyrical. The central claim the speaker tries to talk himself into is simple: if anxiety is starting to rule him, he will choose a decisive identity instead. The refrain-like resolution, I’ll go and be a sodger, isn’t just a plan for work; it’s a way to stop thinking and start moving.

A body measured against fate

To steady himself, the speaker grabs onto what can be counted: I’m twenty-three and five feet nine. Those particulars sound almost like a recruitment description, as if he’s checking his own suitability. But they also hint at a deeper need: when the future feels slippery, the body becomes evidence, a concrete fact he can trust. Youth and height are offered as proof that he can endure whatever comes, and that confidence is part bravado, part self-mockery. The poem’s humor keeps the confidence from turning grand.

Lost savings, chosen hardship

The second stanza supplies the pressure behind the decision. He once gat some gear with meikle care and held it weel thegither, a picture of hard-earned savings carefully kept. Then comes the sting: now its gane, and worse, something mair is gone too. The poem refuses to name that something, which creates a tension: he speaks plainly about money but goes vague at the point of real hurt. Becoming a soldier, then, can be read as both necessity (work after loss) and performance (a tough persona to cover vulnerability).

The refrain as escape and insistence

The repeated line I’ll go and be works like a door the speaker keeps opening to leave his own thoughts behind. Yet repetition also betrays doubt: if he truly felt settled, he wouldn’t need to say it twice. That contradiction gives the poem its bite. It is upbeat on the surface, but underneath it is a man converting disappointment into a hardened decision, choosing the harsh clarity of soldiering over the slow, private spiral of foreboding.