12/3/2023 0 Comments Forward the light brigade![]() “The Charge of the Light Brigade” recalls a disastrous historical military engagement that took place during the initial phase of the Crimean War fought between Turkey and Russia (1854-56). Often, Tennyson uses the same rhyme (and occasionally even the same final word) for several consecutive lines: “Flashed all their sabres bare / Flashed as they turned in air / Sab’ring the gunners there.” The poem also makes use of anaphora, in which the same word is repeated at the beginning of several consecutive lines: “Cannon to right of them / Cannon to left of them / Cannon in front of them.” Here the method creates a sense of unrelenting assault at each line our eyes meet the word “cannon,” just as the soldiers meet their flying shells at each turn. The rhyme scheme varies with each stanza. The use of “falling” rhythm, in which the stress is on the first beat of each metrical unit, and then “falls off” for the rest of the length of the meter, is appropriate in a poem about the devastating fall of the British brigade. Each line is in dimeter, which means it has two stressed syllables moreover, each stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed syllables, making the rhythm dactylic. This poem is comprised of six numbered stanzas varying in length from six to twelve lines. The world marvelled at the courage of the soldiers indeed, their glory is undying: the poem states these noble 600 men remain worthy of honor and tribute today. As the brigade rode “back from the mouth of hell,” soldiers and horses collapsed few remained to make the journey back. Then they rode back from the offensive, but they had lost many men so they were “not the six hundred” any more.Ĭanons behind and on both sides of the soldiers now assaulted them with shots and shells. They rode into the artillery smoke and broke through the enemy line, destroying their Cossack and Russian opponents. The soldiers struck the enemy gunners with their unsheathed swords (“sabres bare”) and charged at the enemy army while the rest of the world looked on in wonder. Still, they rode courageously forward toward their own deaths: “Into the jaws of Death / Into the mouth of hell / Rode the six hundred.” The 600 soldiers were assaulted by the shots of shells of canons in front and on both sides of them. Not a single soldier was discouraged or distressed by the command to charge forward, even though all the soldiers realized that their commander had made a terrible mistake: “Someone had blundered.” The role of the soldier is to obey and “not to make reply…not to reason why,” so they followed orders and rode into the “valley of death.” They were obeying a command to charge the enemy forces that had been seizing their guns. The poem tells the story of a brigade consisting of 600 soldiers who rode on horseback into the “valley of death” for half a league (about one and a half miles).
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