Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor Similar in theme and tone to Bruce Dawe’s ‘Homecoming’, Kenneth Slessor’s ‘Beach Burial’ describes the burial process during war, and allows the reader to compare how vastly different this process is to a burial during peace time. The poem presents the poet’s attitudes concerning war – the insignificance and unnecessary sacrifice - through the use of language, symbolism, imagery and rhyme. In the first stanza, Slessor explains how …showed first 75 words of 605 total…

…showed last 75 words of 605 total…The 5th and final stanza of ‘Beach Burial’ conveys a certain degree of bitter irony in that no matter which side of a war one is on, all participants end up washed up on the shores the eternity while time passes by. How sad, that these men can only be united in their death. Whether as enemies they fought, Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together, Enlisted on the other front