Analysis of The Last to Leave Poem
Leon Gellert’s poem ‘The Last to Leave’ is a story about a soldier's reflection after a war has been fought. The very first part of the poem says, “The guns were silent” which tells us a war has been fought there but is has since been completed. The man is looking around at the landscape that surrounds him and thinking about the soldiers that have died down in the vales or valleys. When the poem says, “These long forgotten dead with sunken graves” it is referring to all the soldiers that have been buried and haven’t been recognised and the dead soldiers that have not been found. The poem says, “Their only mourners are the moaning waves” and “Their only minstrels are the singing trees”. What it is saying is there is no one there mourning the deaths of the soldiers except for the waves and there aren’t any minstrels there except for the singing trees because there aren’t any funerals for the soldiers because their identities are unknown. The poem also refers to the waves as old and the trees as wise so the dead will always be remembered since the noise will go on forever.