The French and the Spanish Guerillas
The French and the Spanish Guerillas - meaning Summary
Guerrillas as Persistent Threat
The poem depicts Spanish guerrilla fighters enduring hunger, heat, cold and long marches to evade regular forces. Though pursued and dispersed, they reunite and vanish, then strike unexpectedly at the enemy, undermining and haunting him repeatedly. Wordsworth presents them as both tangible warriors and almost dreamlike, buried figures whose mobility and surprise tactics make them a continual psychological and physical menace to the occupying army.
Read Complete AnalysesHUNGER, and sultry heat, and nipping blast From bleak hill-top, and length of march by night Through heavy swamp, or over snow-clad height-- These hardships ill-sustained, these dangers past, The roving Spanish Bands are reached at last, Charged, and dispersed like foam: but as a flight Of scattered quails by signs do reunite, So these,--and, heard of once again, are chased With combinations of long-practised art And newly-kindled hope; but they are fled-- Gone are they, viewless as the buried dead: Where now?--Their sword is at the Foeman's heart; And thus from year to year his walk they thwart, And hang like dreams around his guilty bed.
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