The soldiers in the Light Brigade are being "stormed at," by gunfire, an image that picks up on the word "thundered" in the line we just read.Want to know what cannon fire is like? Check out this YouTube video.So these huge walls of cannon all around them are firing, and making a sound like thunder.A little vocab here: a "volley" from a cannon is just a round of firing.It's almost as if we are right there, turning our heads right, left, and forward, and seeing cannon everywhere. It also makes the feeling of being surrounded much more intense.Well, for one thing, it echoes the three lines in the section above (13-15), which also all start with the same word.Notice how Tennyson stretches this simple information out over three lines.The soldiers are surrounded by enemy cannon, left, right, and front. The valley of Death turns out to be just about as lousy as it sounds.But, too, it is even more openly anti-war than its famous companion piece, and perhaps 19th century anthologizers felt somewhat uncomfortable with it.Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them For one thing, it is quite simply nowhere near as good a poem as Light Brigade. This poem also commemorates a charge on the same day as that of the Light Brigade, but it is almost never recited, almost never included in poetic anthologies. Much less well-known is Tennyson’s other poem about the battle of 25 October 1854, The Charge Of The Heavy Brigade. His aim was not to glorify the war, but to be sure that people did not villify the soldiers who did their duty, even as they condemned the commanders who blundered. Tennyson’s poem was written in an atmosphere of disapproval of the war and the military. The report of the pointless charge of the Light Brigade roused public indignation against the apparently incompetent conduct of the war. All for a cause which few people really understood. As the war dragged on and on without seeming purpose, the public demanded to know why its sons and brothers were in a far-off foreign land, ill-supplied and ill-led, dying of disease and in battle. The Crimean War was the first war in which public opinion played a crucial part because it was the first war in which correspondents could file dispatches almost immediately back to home via the telegraph. It’s praise for mindless obedience to utterly brainless orders was seen as epitomizing all that was wrong with conformity and “the system.” It is ironic that at the time it was published, Tennyson’s poem was criticized as being anti-war and unduly fanning the flames of public opinion against its conduct. Many a shoolchild had to memorize all or part of the poem for public recitation.īy the 1960’s, though, the poem was falling out of favor. The poem’s rapid, rhythmic cadence, suggestive of the thunder of charging horsemen, its use of plain, mostly familiar vocabulary, and its story of unquestioning valor and unthinkable tragedy made it a popular exemplar of literary artistry and patriotic virtue. For most of the century which followed the poem’s publication, it was a classroom standard throughout the English-speaking world. The Charge itself had occurred on October 25th that year – the renowned “Saint Crispin’s Day” of national pride in England, famous for the victory of Henry V over the French 439 years earlier. It was on this day in 1854 that Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s classic poem The Charge Of The Light Brigade was published in London’s Examiner.
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