"patriotic tear that had brimmed his eye"

• Language

  • Oxymoron: “Patriotic tear” juxtaposes noble emotion with sorrow—suggests naive idealism.
  • Past perfect tense (“had brimmed”) indicates that this emotion has faded, showing disillusionment.
  • “Brimmed” implies overflowing feelings, now drained.
• Form

  Use of flashback or memory highlights how quickly emotional motivation collapses in real combat.
• Structure

  • Early in the poem, this moment marks a turning point: from idealism to fear-driven instinct.
  • It signals the soldier’s emotional shift, exposing the fragility of propaganda.
• Writer's Intent

  • Hughes aims to deconstruct the myth of patriotic duty, showing how war destroys its illusion.
  • He portrays how the individual loses all noble motivation under the pressure of survival.