“Charge of the Light Brigade” written by Alfred Tennyson and “Dulce et Decorum est” written by Wilfred Owen.

Authors Avatar

In the next two pages I have talked and described the two war poems that I am studying at them moment. The first one is “Charge of the Light Brigade” written by Alfred Tennyson.  The second is “Dulce et Decorum est” written by Wilfred Owen.  I have also written a little about the author.  At the end I have done a conclusion on which I think was the best.

Alfred Tennyson wrote ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ in 1854.  He wrote it after reading an article by W. H. Russell in the Times Newspaper.  W. H. Russell was famous for his reports in the Crimean War fought in Southern Russia.

As you start to read you can recognize that the rhythm of the poem is that of a galloping horse.  “Half a league, half a league.”  Tennyson refers to the valley as the “valley of death”.  The soldiers are just riding in to meet their death.

In stanza two Tennyson makes a reference to the mistake, “someone had blundered”.  It’s like everyone realised that there had been a mistake.  In the lines “Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die”, he is stating how the soldiers had to do exactly what they were told, even know some of them realized there was a mistake, they weren’t allowed to ask questions.

Join now!

In stanza three you start to get a feeling of what it was like.  “Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them”.  Everywhere they look there’s cannons landing, and its just pure luck if you don’t get hit.  “Into the jaws of death” and “Into the mouth of hell”.  This is what Tennyson compares the change with.  Showing that there’s no way out.  In all three stanzas the last line is “rode the six hundred” stating how many soldiers charged.

Stanza four explains in great detail how it looked. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay