The Battle Of Blenheim is written as a ballad. It is also written as a contrast to war; "tis some poor fellow’s skull said he/ who fell in the great victory". This one seems to sound jolly and childlike. However, war is chaotic and disorderly. The poem describes finding a skull and talks of how the land was ‘wasted’ with ‘fire and sword the country round.’ Worse still, ‘many a childing mother then and new born baby died.’ These are terrible images yet are written in this upbeat way. The contrast is therefore ironic and helps to emphasise Southey’s anti-war message.
The Charge of the Light Brigade is also a ballad. It tells the story of the six hundred men who charged to their inevitable death in a battle in the Crimean War. The men were acting on wrong orders and their tragic story shows us that war is futile. They could not nor would not have wanted to question the orders, ‘theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.’ Although Tennyson shows disbelief that the men had to charge into the ‘mouth of hell’ he does not blame the brave soldiers, the ‘noble six hundred.’ Instead he thinks we should ‘honour the charge they made’. This poem both celebrates and questions the men of war.
The way both poems are structured is very similar, they are both tightly structured into small paragraphs consisting of short lines, (this is a typical charictaristic of ballads/poems).
The Battle Of Blenheim is made up of paragraphs containing 6 short sentances. This is consistant throughout the poem. Where-as The Charge of the Light Brigade varys. It contains different sized paragraphs, ranging from as little as 6 lines, to as many as 11 lines. Keeping the lines short, and the paragraphs short helps the poems create a tight, neat edge to them. This helps the readers grasp the messages, without confusion of messy, not to the point lines and paragraphs.
Both poets help us to understand the terrible consequence of war through emotive and graphic images. In The Battle of Blenheim, the poet paints an image of thousands of men falling in the fields, "for many thousand men…were slain in that great victory." Here the word "slain" helps us to imagine the brutality, that men where not just simply killed, but carelessly put to death. This is further seen by the image of the bodies "rotting in the sun". The men have lost their lives but have also been been left on the battle field to decay. This brings to light they have lost their dignity, an have been discrased. The harsh landscape of war is also captured in the image of the "burnt dwelling to the ground" and the "wasted" country. Rather than being rich with goodness, and offering a home inviroment like it does now to Kaspar and his family, the land was stripped of its goodness, an ravaged by war at that time.
Alfred Tennyson also captures this brutal vision of war. He uses the metaphor "valley of Death" to gives the idea that death was inevitable. He evokes the sound of war to add to the image "to right of them, to left of them, in front of them" to capture the over-powering noise of the cannons bombarding the men. He describes bodies as "shattered and sundered" and "stormed at with shot and shell." The alliteration here emphasises the constant noise of battle and the men’s impossible position. The word "stormed" also suggests chaos and violence. Tennyson’s use of onomatopoeic words, ‘volleyed and thundered’, adds to the overall effect of a harsh landscape of war.
In conclusion, these two poems vividly capture the tragedy of war: men die, buildings burn, and it brings nothing but chaos. Both poems also suggest that people often remember the names of wars or battles but forget the reality of how things really are at war.
Maddison Couzens
