Both poems have a regular rhythm. However in Owen’s poem you can not really hear the rhyming as the he uses an alternate rhyme and because of the lack of endstopped lines the reader is not always conscious of the solid rhythm. Owen trys to underline ways in which the soldiers fought in misery, to do this he uses words that rhyme to emphasise the amount of hard work it took for the soldiers like, ‘Sludge’ and ‘trudge’. These rhyme and he is trying to put across to the readers the difficulty, which the soldiers had to fight, especially from the mud.
Both poems are narrative, and they are divided into paragraphs. In ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ the lines are longer than in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.
In Tennyson’s poem the lines are mainly endstopped and the lines are short with different sized stanzas. The stanzas work like paragraphs. Each one describes a different event. In Owen's poem the lines are mainly 10 syllables per line, and the lines are longer, which gives an ordered and regular rhythm, which represents the discipline, the soldiers, fought.
In Tennyson’s poem there is a solid regular rhyming scheme, however it has a varied pattern from stanza to stanza. In Owen’s poem there is also a strong rhyming scheme; it rhymes alternately. In Tennyson’s poem, the relentlessness of the poem is underlined by the repetition. Tennyson's poem has a strong consistent rhythm, at the end of each stanza, ‘six hundred,’ is repeated, this emphasises the sound of cantering horses, it is also a solid falling cadence from the sound ‘hundred’ which brings the tone of the poem down. There are also other words repeated in different stanzas, in stanza three and five the word ‘cannon’ is repeated three times, this is very effective as it gives the sense that the soldiers are surrounded. Also stanza 5 is basically a repetition of stanza 3 however stanza three is them going towards the attack, ‘cannon in front,’ and in stanza 5 is them coming away from it, ‘cannon behind them.’ In both poems the poets make each stanza represent different events in the poem, this makes it clearer of what is going on.
Both poets use many poetic devices. In ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ Owen uses a great deal of imagery to emphasise the description, and make the poem more visual, to get powerful images. ‘Drunk with fatigue,’ this is a metaphor; it gives a sense that the men are acting in an ill co-ordinated manner and that they are utterly exhausted. It gives you an insight of what they are feeling. Owen also uses a few similes, such as ‘like old beggers.’ I found it unusual to compare a soldier with an old man but I think that Owen meant the soldiers are old with their bitter experience. Another simile he uses is, ‘coughing like hags,’ Owen compared the soldiers to hags this is due to their appearance as the soldiers will be muddy messy and would have badly torn uniform. There are other similes, ‘’like a man in fire,’ Owen is trying to give you an image of the boy making sudden movements trying to escape. ‘Like a devil sick of sin’ this is another simile, which suggests that he is fed up with fighting. Owen is trying to put very vivid images into your head, he uses onomatopoeia, ‘gargling,’ this gives the sound effects to what the boy is doing.
However in Tennyson’s poem there are fewer poetic devices. There are a few metaphors in the poem. ‘All in the valley of death.’ This is an ionry, as the soldiers do not know that it is where many people will die. ‘Jaws of death’ and ‘mouth of hell’ are two other metaphors, which describe the valley as a monster, which gives a powerful image of danger. He will sometimes repeat these metaphors to try and enforce to the reader the danger they are in. Tennyson tries to give you a feeling of what it was like by using onomatopoeia, ‘volley’d and thunder’d.’ To show the impact he thought they had on the opposition he uses alliteration ‘shattere’d and sunder’d. I feel that this did work well and gave a sense of hearing the cannons fire. In the last paragraph Tennyson asks a rhetorical question, ‘When can the glory fade?’ I think he is anticipating the reader will think never, this is trying to make the poem memorable for the reader and to try and make them think about war from Tennyson’s point of view.
The poem which I felt was most effective was ‘Dulce est Decorum Est’ I thought this as I prefered the way in which he made it personal and emotional which gives a significance of war. It was easier for me to understand so I felt more involved in the poem. I found the way in which the poem was written was interesting, I liked the poetic devices he used. I also shared in his point of view on war so it had a big impact on me. Also I thought that in Owen's poem the amount of imagery was more often, which gave a very powerful and vivid image in your mind.
