Compare and Contrast ‘After Blenheim’ By Robert Southey and ‘Drummer Hodge’ By Thomas Hardy

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Compare and Contrast 'After Blenheim' by Robert Southey and 'Drummer Hodge' by Thomas Hardy

'After Blenheim' is a poem written by Robert Southey in 1798. It is about an old man named Kasper. Kasper is telling his grandchildren, Peterkin and Wilhelmine, about the Battle of Blenheim (1704) during the Franco Prussian War. It was written to give an anti-war message because of the situation between England and France.

Hardy wrote 'Drummer Hodge' in 1899 during the Boer War. It is about a young drummer boy who is in an unknown place. It was written to give Hardy's point of view on the war between England and the Boers. The story was chosen to give a message of war and experience for young men. Hardy wrote it because he believed it was strange that a young boy should leave his home in Wessex to enter the war and end his life dead in Africa, a country that he knows nothing of and is forever lost.

'After Blenheim' is a very suitable title telling the reader that the poem is about the Battle of Blenheim. It begins in a narrative form, at Old Kasper's farm. It