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Requiem for The Croppies is a sonnet, so has fourteen lines.

While the rhyme scheme is very loosely ABABCDCDEFEFEF, many of the rhymes are imperfect.

For example, "thrown", "cannon" and "coffin" rhyme only in the "n" sound at the end of the word – this may be to reflect the speaker’s uneducated status.

This is also reflected in the rhythm which is not perfect pentameter – many of the lines run over ten syllables.

The speaker - shown through the pronouns "we" and "our" and "us" - is one of the farmer rebels and would therefore not have been well-spoken.

This adds to the feeling in the poem that this battle was not an equal one from the beginning.

The punctuation in the poem creates a lot of reflective pauses. Note the use of dashes and caesuras.

As the word "Requiem" in the title means a mass or act of remembrance, these pauses and the contemplative tone they create may be to make the reader reflect on the futile loss of life and the cruel circumstances of the deaths.

The cyclical structure of the sonnet - with the reference to barley in the first line repeated in the final line - shows the hope and resistance that have grown out of the Irish Rebellion.

The barley - kept by the poor rebels in their pockets as food rations - grows out of the graves of the men when they are buried in their "greatcoats".

The barley - growing every year - comes to symbolise the regeneration of passion and the fight against British rule. The deaths of the Croppies killed on Vinegar Hill has therefore not been in vain, a spirit of resistance has grown from their sacrifice.