Writing the Real World: Tennyson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'

In this episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, hosts Joe and Maiya examine Alfred Lord Tennyson's iconic war poem 'The Charge of the Light Brigade.' Written just weeks after the disastrous cavalry charge during the Crimean War in October 1854, this poem dramatically reshaped the Victorian cultural conversation around military sacrifice and heroism.

Joe and Maiya explore how Tennyson, as Poet Laureate, transformed a military blunder that initially embarrassed the British public into a testament of soldier bravery and noble sacrifice. They analyze how the poem's distinctive dactylic meter evokes galloping horses while creating a soundscape that immediately signals to readers that something has gone wrong, mirroring the disastrous charge itself.

The hosts unpack Tennyson's masterful techniques, including biblical allusions to "the valley of death," the mythic resonance of "the six hundred," and the use of natural imagery to elevate a military disaster into an epic, almost spiritual struggle. Through careful close reading, they reveal how Tennyson subtly criticizes military leadership while glorifying the common soldiers, setting a precedent for later war poetry.

Download exclusive PDFs on 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' available to Poetry+ members:

• Full PDF Guide
• Poetry Snapshot PDF
• Poem Printable PDF 
  • with meter
  • with rhyme scheme
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• Alfred Lord Tennyson PDF Guide

Tune in and discover:

• How Tennyson wrote and published this influential poem just seven weeks after the actual military event
• Why the poem's metrical choices create a soundscape of battle
• How biblical and classical allusions elevate a military disaster into heroic sacrifice
• The connections between this Victorian poem and later World War I poetry
• The remarkable power of poetry to reshape national narratives around tragedy

Transcript

Writing the Real World: Tennyson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' (Transcript)
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Maiya: [00:00:00] half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of death. Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said. Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred., the six hundred the light brigade. Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred. 

Joe: Welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by the team at PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. I'm Joe, and I'm here with my co-host Maiya, who just beautifully read the opening two stanzas of today's poem, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade We're gonna be discussing a range of themes today, including the importance of meter in the poem, writing the Real World, and how the poem was able to shape the Victorian conversation.

But before we get into the poem itself, Maiya, can you tell us a little bit [00:01:00] more about Tennyson as a man and as a poet?

Maiya: Yes, of course I can. So, Lord Tennyson was born in 1809 in Lincolnshire, making him a British poet. He came from a relatively middle class family, and in 1827 was when his first poem Two Brothers was published. He attended Cambridge between 1828 and 1831, but unfortunately didn't leave with a degree due to his father's death in 31.

He then went home to go and take care of his mother. During his time at university, he fostered a very close friendship with a friend, Arthur Hallam, who unfortunately also then followed very swiftly after Lord, Tennyson's father and died in 1833. This was the year that Tennyson published The Lady of Shalott poem that did not get an amazing reception after this point, perhaps due to the death of his close friend and his father, he then didn't publish for nine years. does, however, break this silence in 1842 with his real breakthrough collection poems, which catapulted him to poetic fame. From 1842 [00:02:00] onwards, he publishes pretty regularly and becomes Poet Laureate in 1850. Now, this is the highest accolade a poet can achieve. It's a lifelong position, and Tennyson picked it up from previous Poet Laureate Wordsworth after his death.

So you get an understanding the scale of fame that Tennyson had managed to achieve at this point. From 1850 onwards, Joe and I were actually saying before the podcast, this really becomes the peak of his life. He was 33 very, very young to achieve a Poet Laureate title, and he held it until his death in 1892, where he was buried in Westminster Abbey in Poets’ Corner. But Joe, let's focus on the poem today. The charge of the Light Brigade is arguably, I think, Lord Tennyson's most famous poem. But can you tell us a little bit about when it was written, why it was written?

Joe: Thanks, Maiya. That was great and I'd love to just focus in on some of those dates there. So you're absolutely right. 1850 is when he becomes Poet Laureate replacing William Wordsworth. And crucially, this poem is published four years later in December of 1854. Now, the reason that's so important is kind of [00:03:00] naturally, in order to be even considered eligible for Poet Laureates, you need to be publishing some pretty major significant, well-respected work already.

It's fairly unusual for Poet Laureates to actually be publishing their finest work while in the position itself, and that really lends an extra cultural weight to the poem, which we're gonna talk about a little bit later on. But in terms of the poem's immediate context, it was inspired by a real life battle that took place on

The 25th of October, 1854, between the British forces and the Russian forces at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War. The Crimean War ran from 1853 to 1856. And the kind of thing we need to get outta the way straight away is to establish that this was a disastrous encounter for the British. The Light Brigade, as the name suggests, was a light cavalry division.

And due to a miscommunication, an order from Lord Raglan was misinterpreted. The light brigade ended up running towards heavy cavalry, which they were not equipped to do, and the vast majority of them were killed. 607, according to the initial count, were involved in the charge, and 409 of those [00:04:00] soldiers were lost.

So this really tragic, disastrous, and ultimately avoidable. series of events led to the death of 409 servicemen. In fact a war correspondent who was at the scene, William Howard Russell said that, and I quote, our light brigade was annihilated by their own nation.

And that gives an impression of the way this event was interpreted in its immediate aftermath. This was regarded as a blunder. This was regarded as a foolhardy exercise, something that was shameful, something that was embarrassing. And Maiya and I are gonna talk later on about the way in which this poem shapes the cultural reception, not only at the time, but in the decades and indeed centuries since.

But one of the really important things to mention here is that this is one of the first major European conflicts that the British. Public was really aware of as it was happening. Newspapers covered the war extensively, and of course, as I just mentioned, there were war correspondence at the scene. Now, in terms of getting a chronology here, as I mentioned, the charge itself took place on the 25th of October.

Now the first article that appeared in the Times [00:05:00] Newspaper that Tennyson read was published on the 13th of November. So, just over two weeks later. Now, Tennyson wrote his poem. In a matter of minutes, it seems on the 2nd of December, 1854. So again, we're talking weeks after the event and even fewer weeks after the event became known to the British public.

And the poem was published just one week later, the 9th of December in the Examiner. So from the event that inspired the poem to the poems publication, we're talking about as little as six to seven weeks. So this really, really fast turnaround, as I mentioned, we're gonna talk a little bit about that later on.

Now, this episode began with Maiya beautifully reading those first two stanzas, and I'm gonna throw it back to you, Maiya, because where would you like to begin in that first stanza in particular, where do we dive into this poem?

Maiya: Well, Joe, I think the best option for us is to dive right in at the start, those first two lines that are a very simple repetition of the words. Half a league, half a league, half a league onward. And I emphasize the words that way because Tennyson has written this [00:06:00] poem in a very specific meter, and that meter is dactylic dimeter. Where the first syllable is stressed and the following two are unstressed. Now what this does is create a sonic feeling very similar to that of a horse galloping. If, again, I repeat, half a league, half a league, half a league onward. You get this sense of a rolling forward, and I think it's such a brilliant way to start this poem, especially given we've already been given the context by Joe that this is a charge of cavalry moving towards that really impending death. There is a sense of movement and heaviness here that I think you get from the absolute outset.

But Joe, I guess the question I really have is, given that you immediately have this sense of movement forward, but you and I have gone into this poem, we know the context, we know that course so many of these young men don't return. How do you think that impacts, fresh reader coming into this poem and understanding it from the outset?

Joe: It is a really good question. I suppose the first thing that comes to [00:07:00] mind is how the meter grabs the reader's attention. And again, I say reader, of course it's worth remembering that a lot of, Tennysons works were read in public spaces and they would've been read, by somebody who had the newspaper, the examiner, when they first bought it.

They might have read it to friends or family. So it, really does lend itself to being, listened to aloud. And it's worth noting that the most common metrical foot in English poetry is the I am. And the I am is a metrical foot in which there are two syllables, unstressed followed by stress. And that is much more reminiscent of most natural speech in the English language because we tend to start.

from an unstress position and grow with emphasis as the syllable continues. A lot of words in English language naturally are I am, we kind of grow in intensity. So whenever we have a metrical pattern, whether it's truckies or whether it's dact tails that has the stress on the first syllable, we're slightly wrong footed from the start because the emphasis is seized immediately.

So in addition to the, evocation of the horse’s galloping, which is a great point, Maiya. I think what the meter serves to do Is create a soundscape that is incredibly audibly [00:08:00] distinctive. This is unlike other poems, because other poems don't tend to use dactyl in this way. It's quite an unusual meter, even for Tennyson. 

And I think what that immediately does is it emphasizes the fact to the reader that this is something that has gone wrong. This is something contrary to what they expect. Just as, of course, the disaster itself was, an aberration. It was a disaster. It was something that had not gone to planned. So by flipping the kind of expected pattern of syllables, normally, as I said, we go from unstressed to stressed.

To have the stress syllable first, I think immediately puts the reader in mind that something here is not as it should be.

Maiya: I really love that idea that something is not as it should be. And I think what really stands out to me, especially in these opening two lines, is that, if you take a stanza race, for example, if you take anyone who's traveling anywhere, your journey generally has a destination. So as you are mentioning distances, those distances would tend to get shorter.

If you're running a race, you go from a hundred meters to 50 meters to 25 meters to the finish line. And yet here, this repetition of the same distance, constantly repeating [00:09:00] another half a league, another half a league, which I believe is around a mile and a half. it just serves to emphasize that. These soldiers are going in no particular direction. There is a sense of randomness here. There is a sense of lack of direction. And I think, of course, yes, that refers specifically to the cavalry and to the journey they're taking, but also the lack of direction from their superiors.

And I think it's such a powerful way to start a poem that, Joe and I will go on to discuss was written so quickly and there are so many layers to it.

Joe: I am so glad you mentioned, the repetition of that half a league and talked actually about the specifics of that measurement of distance because one of the things I really like about the poem I really admire about it is its ability to seamlessly move from the literal to the abstract in terms of place, in terms of distance and in terms of the significance of events.

Half a league obviously is a technical term. It's a measurement of distance as you mentioned, and it's immediately followed by the third line all in the valley of death. And what I love about that is we move seamlessly from real quantifiable measurements of [00:10:00] distance to an abstract location that nevertheless resembles a real place, a valley.

We can all picture a valley. We've all probably seen a valley, and yet this is not any valley on earth. This is some kind of evocation of the underworld. And what Tennyson is therefore able to do is take this disastrous event, this event that most of the British public immediately were very. scornful are very embarrassed by and elevate to some kind of spiritual struggle against evil.

It's no longer simply a group of men that made bad decisions in the battle against other men. But actually the poem immediately becomes, something far more abstract. And of course, the Valley of Death is a clear evocation of the Bible. Psalm 23, 4. though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for God is with me.

So once again, what Tennyson is doing here, and we're gonna talk about this later on, is Tennyson is trying to change the cultural conversation. Tennyson is trying to, without diminishing the tragedy and without diminishing the folly, he is trying to elevate the bravery of the soldiers involved in this conflict.

And by doing that, by [00:11:00] creating a link between the Charge of the Light Brigade, and the idea that you're doing something with God on your side, and he uses the biblical evocation and the merging, the blending, the conflation of physical and abstract space in order to do that.

Maiya: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I think Tennyson does a really incredible job of, as you say, flexing those slightly more abstract evocations. This is one of the few poems that we get to talk about where although, yes, it is fictionalized, it's much less of a fiction than many of the other poems we talk about on this podcast. 

And what really stands out to me is this mention of the six hundred. We constantly get this repetition of this very nice round number.

As Joe mentioned earlier, it was not a round six hundred that went into this battle, it was 607. However, of course this doesn't necessarily track as well as something that is very concrete. When I hear the six hundred, it reminds me of you know, the ancient Greek myths of the Spartan 300, this very small army that survived a counter attack by thousands and thousands of Persians.

You [00:12:00] have this real mythic and epic feeling that comes along with the simplification of the number, and I think it's a really interesting way to bring in the biblical, and the mythic. it really just serves to elevate the sense of bravery in this poem from the outset. And as Joe mentioned, he's trying to change the conversation. Instead of this being a blunder and a mistake, it becomes almost a mythic intervention by the British. And I think that massively contributes to the power this poem has.

Joe: I think that's absolutely spot on. Maiya. I think the evocation of The Battle of Thermopylae is a really interesting way to access 10 and psyche in terms of what he was trying to do with this poem. And of course, many modern readers, and I'm sure many of our listeners will be very familiar with that battle.

It's popularized in the movie 300, 15 years ago or so. And again, it's that classic archetypal story of the underdog overcoming some insurmountable force. And I think just to kind of make a comparison, ' it offers an interesting insight into what Tennyson is trying to do here, because in the aftermath of that battle, there was a Greek poet by the name of Simonides [00:13:00] who wrote an epitaph.

And the epitaph is roughly translated to this. Go tell the Spartans passerby that here obedient to her laws, we lie. What that effectively means is that the Spartans wanted their legacy, wanted their sacrifice to be told, to be reminded that they knew they were going in to die, but they were willing to do it because they were in defense of something larger.

They were in defense of their country, their city, their families, et cetera. Now, again, it's really important for us to emphasize that that was not the way that the Charger light Brigade had been interpreted. Initially. It was not regarded as anything heroic. It was regarded as a blunder. We're gonna talk about that word again in stanza two, but what Tennyson is trying to do here is reframe the disaster, and actually, rather than looking at this as a series of mistakes, he would rather view this as.

a moment in which to revere six hundred men who stood against insurmountable odds. It's crucial to note that the number of the enemy is never stated in this poem because it's easier for the reader to imagine that the six hundred were vastly, vastly outnumbered and that they did [00:14:00] so in defense of something worth defending.

And that's the key. The ability to tie the incident to the abstract belief in Britain, in the west, in civilization, and whatever you want to call it, is what Tennyson is trying to do here. He's trying to suggest that this death, this sacrifice was in defense of something worthy of dying.

Maiya: It's a really interesting point you make there, Joe and I want to throw it back to you again to really focus on something that I think gets missed in this poem quite a lot, which is the direct speech that we get. Of course, we've spoken about how Lord Raglan was the one that gave the order and it was misinterpreted. However, we really don't get the sense in this poem that. There is a lack of intention. It doesn't seem miscommunicated. We have forward the light brigade charged for the guns. He said, and the anonymity of the he is something I'd really like to focus on. So, why do you think Tennyson doesn't name drop?

Why do you think he just makes it a general or a generic key?

Joe: It's a really interesting question. You and I were talking about this before the episode, recording and. Obviously, as we mentioned at the top of the episode, [00:15:00] Tennyson was the Poet Laureate when he wrote this poem, and that gives you a great access. It gives you a great voice, because it kind of lends itself to writing about great events that shape the nation.

But it also comes with responsibilities. It's not appropriate for the Poet Laureate to come out and start accusing senior officers, many of whom are members of the British aristocracy of malpractice, of, fool hardiness. And I think on the one hand, it's designed simply to protect, the British establishment, not pointing fingers, instead focusing on the heroism of the soldiers rather than the blunder of the officers.

Again, you take some of the heat away from those blunders and the people who made them, but I think there are hints in this poem. That Tennyson is dissatisfied. He might not be able to point the finger explicitly, but there are certainly hints that he is not wishing to allow the officer class off the hook entirely.

And if we could just move forward to that second stanza where we get these wonderful lines, someone had blundered and followed by theirs, not to make reply, there's not to reason why theirs, but to do and die. Now I wanna look at that. Someone had blundered for a moment [00:16:00] before I throw it back to you, Maiya, because as I mentioned, Tennyson had read about this in the same way that most people had, which was in the Times article on the 13th of November, 1854.

And that Times article contained the following sentence, the British soldier will do his duty even to certain death and is not paralyzed by the feeling that he's the victim of some hideous blunder. And I can't help but think that Tennyson would've read that line and focused in on that word blunder because I dunno about you Maiya, but.

To my mind, blundering is spilling a cup of coffee. It's not accidentally sending 400 men to their death, you know, because It's not an innocent mishap. It's something that has grave consequence. So I think that by taking that word from the Times article and reproducing it in his poem with that wonderfully ambiguous, someone had blundered, I think, which is an end stop line by the way.

no, it doesn't flow immediately onto the next line. We are meant to slightly linger on that phrase. I think that's Tennyson's way of, in as much as he could in his position as Poet Laureate, suggesting that somebody is responsible for this. And actually the juxtaposition of that word blunder against the weight of the [00:17:00] tragedy that we know happened, I think is intended to make the reader stop and pause and perhaps wish for more justice than had previously been achieved.

Maiya: absolutely. And it uplifts the individual soldiers as well. Of course, if someone makes a mistake in battle, the whole regimen is implicated within that disaster.

But here, what Tennyson really cleverly does is separate the individual soldiers. I think later in the poem we get this mention of Hero and horse, which again sets the individual soldier against the establishment, against those ordering classes. It's really fascinating to me, and I know Joe, you said we'd speak about this probably later in the podcast, but it's really interesting to me that as part of the cultural conversation, here was really fighting for the underdog a little bit.

He was fighting for those individual soldiers, and of course, only around 200 actually made it home. And we see this shift in conversation, because we go from this huge disaster the British cavalry and arguably some pretty horrendous news coverage to Queen Victoria later giving medals of honor to the returning soldiers. So there is not just a [00:18:00] small cultural shift. This is absolutely huge for the soldiers involved. And I think, you know, a lot of the time we, query how much of an impact poets can have on the conversation or on history.

And this is such a fascinating example of how directly someone who has influence and power can influence the news. I think it's such a great example.

Joe: I completely agree and I was thinking about this and we spoke about this before the episode. It's so counterintuitive to me. We think of our lives today in 2025 as being all about The immediate . We live in a 24 hour, news cycle. We can respond to things immediately on social media. The way in which information is disseminated has become faster, and that comes with problems, but it also comes with great opportunity.

And yet, if we think about cultural depictions and portrayals of real life events, whether that's on film, whether that's in music, whether that's on television, it actually can take months or even years to respond to things because even if you commission something the day it happened, it takes time to cast actors, to film, to edit, to advertise the idea that this [00:19:00] poem was just seven weeks after the event.

people in Britain were still reeling from the facts of the event, and yet already they have a cultural portrayal that is directly or indirectly telling them how they should be thinking about it. And Maiya and I talk a lot on this podcast about the relationship between art, poetry, and real life events, and we often talk about that relationship as being symbiotic.

I think it's never clearer than this poem where you have events and the cultural portrayal of them kind of working in lockstep, working absolutely in tandem, happening at the same time, which is so rare, even in our modern life where we think we can respond to things quickly. But just going back a moment, Maiya, we're talking about this kind of potential that the poem is pointing the finger at some of the ruling class without naming them and without being, too explicit because of course we mentioned he had responsibilities as Poet Laureate.

I was really struck when you were talking about how much it reminded me of some of the episodes we did at the beginning of this series on the First World War poets, because there is so much of that conversation that we had over those three episodes on Brooke Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon that is present in [00:20:00] this poem some 60 years earlier.

I mean, on the one hand, this poem is still largely reverential of war. It's got that brook esque passion for and belief in the goodness of fighting for a cause. And yet that hint at dissatisfaction with the ruling class at frustration with the way that the soldiers, in charge were conducting the war is so reminiscent of that conversation we had about Siegfried Sassoon in a Soldier's Declaration, which is 1917. And again, I'm just gonna read an extract from that. for listeners, I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

Now, that might be some 60 years later, and yet it feels so relevant to what Tennyson is doing here, which is that he is never, ever taking aim at individual soldiers, the soldiers who actually gave their lines where he is critical, and it is subtle. It's at the decision makers, and that is so prescient when we think about the kind of writing that Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, were gonna produce during the [00:21:00] First World War.

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Maiya: . Now before the break, Joe mentioned how this poem can relate to some of the other poems that we've explored earlier in this season of Beyond the Verse for Wilfred Owen to Siegfried, to Soon to Rupert Brook. And of course, those three poets that I've just mentioned are World War I poets.

And one of those similarities that I'd really like to focus on is that idea that it is [00:22:00] patriotic to die your country in warfare. Now, nobody is more clear against this stance than Wilfred Owen. And in one of our earlier episodes this season, if you can go back to our miniseries on the World War I poets, we talked about the poem, Dulce et Decorum Est Now this roughly translates to it is right and proper. The remainder of that phrase goes pro patria mori, which is to die for your country. And in Dolce at Decorum Est Owen is absolutely critical of this idea of sending young soldiers to their death for a war that really seems to be getting them nowhere.

it's no longer for honor or for protection, but it is more for really imperialist glory and in Dulce et Decorum Est what always strikes me is that Owen's excellence at using natural and unnatural forces. We have this idea that they are being absolutely ravaged by the wind and rain and gas, and all of these things come together to make the soldiers, suffer. But I definitely think there are echoes of this [00:23:00] in charge of the light brigade, and I would be very surprised if Owen hadn't read this poem and taken some inspiration because of course we have this line in second stanza theirs, but to do and die.

This is a much more gentle criticism than Owen's, but it's a criticism nonetheless. However, in stanza three, I really want to focus on this line. Cannon in front of them, volleyed and Thundered stormed at with shot and shell, now, thundered and stormed are paired so closely together that it's absolutely impossible to ignore more natural elements of this poem shining through because of course, yes you get the impression that they are overwhelmed by being shot out by cannons. But the idea that there is a natural force playing into this, something greater than the war itself. Really serves, again, to elevate this sense of this being an epic historic battle, thundered and stormed.

You can almost feel the heaviness in the air in the poem. I think it's such a good way to bridge that gap between making this simply a battle that occurred in another [00:24:00] land and something that is much, much greater than itself. But Joe, what do you think about that? 

Joe: think you're absolutely spot on, Maiya. I think the comparison to Owen is really apt. And when we did that miniseries, and in that Owen episode, we talked about a poem, it's Strange Meeting, and one of the things that we talked about was how Owen uses hell as an escape. He says, escape to hell. And the effect of that is to say that the trenches are so much worse than hell.

The idea that hell would somehow be a reprieve from the horrors of the trenches and that kind of imagery about the battleground, about the trenches being hell as baseline is so informed by poems like this one. So if we look at the end of stanza three, we get the evocation of the jaws of death, and then Tennyson states into the mouth of hell.

So there's two things I wanna look at there. First and foremost, it's the jaws and the mouth. The idea that hell and death are some kind of ravenous beast that are going to physically consume the soldiers. And again, the idea of hell as being something with a mouth, with jaws that eats you is really from my [00:25:00] mind, drawing on the work of Dante, in particular in Paradise Lost, where the figure of the devil, the figure of Lucifer, is shown to eat and chew upon the bodies of the worst sinners in history for all eternity.

The likes of Judas, Brutus, and Cassius are all being chewed upon by this three-headed beast.

And by doing so, so effectively, Tennyson is contributing to that kind of, cliche, the idea that battlefield being a war is like being in hell. And that really lays the groundwork for people like Owen to then subvert that expectation by saying, actually no, hell would be an improvement.

So it's fascinating to see how a war poem like this, despite being 60 years prior to the First World War, it seems to be in dialogue with some of those poems that we talked about in that mini series.

And by describing these soldiers charging into the mouth of hell, what Tennyson is doing is he's almost suggesting that they are repeating Christ's mission. They are descending into hell to save the righteous. And once again, this is designed to elevate the heroism of the individual soldiers. This battle was considered a [00:26:00] disaster.

Tennyson is not only saying it wasn't a disaster entirely, but he's actually suggesting it was doing the Lord's work. So moving through the poem Maiya, can you tell us a little bit about Stanza four and where you'd like to look in that stanza?

Maiya: Absolutely. And I'll read it for the benefit of listeners, because I think what's really worth picking up on is some of the sibilance in this. So those kind of repeated S sounds. The stands opens. Flashed all their sabers. Bear flashed as they turned in air.

Sabering, the gunners there charging an army while all the world wandered plunged in the battery smoke right through the line. They broke Cossack and Russian reeled from the saber stroke shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not, not the six hundred. Now if you take these sounds at a very basic level, of course, if you have this hissing s sound, it's generally seen to be quite soft, quite gentle these more explosive B sounds, which are generally seen as quite harsh and of course very literally in [00:27:00] this poem represent a breaking through. But what I love about the way that these s sounds come through and this stanza in particular, is that you are not being presented with Englishmen who are soft. We, have seen consistently throughout this poem that these soldiers are being uplifted , and yet what the poet has so successfully managed to do is still offer them a little bit of humanity.

Because of course, put yourself in their shoes. If you are in a war and you are facing heavy gunfire, cannons, artillery, and you are going in on a fast horse with a sword, you are so unlikely to succeed. And yet the bravery of these soldiers is something that is uplifted time and time again.

They're flashing their sabers. there's a real emphasis that's put on the fact that they are charging into this situation and they are not scared. There is not a sense that they are hiding. They are not running away. They are running into and through and. You get a resolution, you have this moment at which they break through the line and after this, the S sounds become [00:28:00] really, really present.

The saber stroke that shattered and sundered. And I really think that this is the moment at which there is a turning point. There's a turn in this poem because here is the crux of the action. Here is where not the six hundred ride back. This is the moment of loss. And yet we have been presented a picture in which there is no fear here.

There is bravery and honor, and it's such a fantastic point from Tennyson to use these kind of generally quite soft sounds to actually serve the exact opposite purpose. he's not softening the soldiers, he's not making them weak, he's making them strong. But what do you think Joe?

Joe: That was brilliant Maiya. Really, really interesting discussion of that soundscape and another evocation of the later poetry of Wilfred Owen, I think we spoke a lot about his vivid soundscapes of the battlefield. The thing I always think about the contrast of the sibilants against those plosive sounds is that it's reminiscent of the journey of the soldiers themselves.

That kind of whistling of the bullets and of the cannon fire as it goes past is really evoked by the sibilant, but then juxtaposed by that thudding plosive sound, [00:29:00] which could be the impact a set bullet bullet or said cannonball, and it's That kind of overwhelming soundscape of whistling and thudding sounds throughout that stanza that really puts the reader in mind of how these soldiers must have experienced this charge.

I mean, it's utterly terrifying, the idea that you'd be overwhelmed by sounds, any one of which could signal your impending death

so I'd just like to pick up on a subtle difference, between stanza three and stanza five of the poem. 'cause the first three lines of stanza three are about the position of the canons in relation to the light brigade. We're told they're to the right of them, to the left of them and in front of them.

But then when we go forward to stanza five, they are still to the right and to the left, but they are now behind them. Now, on the one hand, this could simply, suggest that the light brigade has turned around and is now in retreat, which of course we know they did, but we also have that sense now that perhaps they are being surrounded by this canon fire and it works nicely with that point I was making earlier on about. the description of hell and death being focused on the image of a mouth or of a set of jaws.

Because what we have here is the implication that the light brigade has been somehow consumed [00:30:00] by the enemy. The enemy is all consuming. They now surround them. There is no escape from this.

Now, earlier on, Maiya mentioned the significance of the horse and hero. And again, we get this image again in stanza five while horse and Hero fell. And what I think is interesting about that is that both of them are singular. We know, of course there were hundreds of men and hundreds of horses, but the decision that Tennyson makes to view that loss in the singular, I think, is designed to evoke the memory of famous heroes and horses throughout literary and cultural history.

So listeners today might be familiar with the film Warhorse based on the 1992, Michael Morpurgo novel of the same name. And there is something really interesting throughout human history of relationship between kind of a heroic figure and their steed and their horse. I mean, we could go to, examples from earlier in the 20th century like Tolkien and who has many such examples, but we can go back to ancient myth as well, which was a regular inspiration for tennis.

And thinking about the example of Pegasus and the Greek hero Han thinking about Achilles and his horses from Homer. Thinking of course about the [00:31:00] example of Alexander the Great and his horse Cephas. This relationship between an individual hero and their horse is being evoked here. by the decision to use the singular rather than the plural.

And what that does is it serves to elevate each individual member of the Light Brigade who remember up to this point, we've largely viewed as a collective six hundred. We now get to view each of them as heroic in their own right, with their own individual story, their own individual heroism. Because as I mentioned, the examples I've just given are all very distinct.

Bellerophon is not the same as Alexander, not the same as Achilles, et cetera, et cetera. So what this singular description does is it allows the reader to view each one of the six hundred as distinct as having their own story, their own motivations, and their own worthiness of remembrance.

Maiya: For sure and Tennyson really operates that reversal So cleverly, because you have this impression that, if you were to enter this poem as a contemporary reader, someone who was picking up the times at that moment That you would begin this poem with the impression that this was almost a cowardly [00:32:00] act and instead in this kind of penultimate stanza, horse and hero fell, they, that had fought so well, came through the jaws of death, back from the mouth of hell. There is absolutely no way that you can view this specific piece of writing as critical of the soldiers themselves.

There is an absolute heroism to this and I think it's really a beautiful sentiment because of course, as you mentioned earlier, Tennyson does have a responsibility as Poet Laureate to uplift his country. Of course, he's in a position of power and yet he's using that power to really pay attention to individual stories. And I think it's a really honorable thing to do because of course a lot of the time when we talk about history, you know, we say history is written by the winners.

This is an example where I don't believe personally that the six hundred were the winners. Nevermind the fact that 409 of them were lost. This is a story about loss. This is a poem about great loss, but also great victory in the sense that individuals are honored. And I think what Tennyson does here is offer a [00:33:00] really unique perspective because he is balancing all at once this great responsibility of. Writing on behalf of and for his country, but also being very sensitive to individual causes. And I think it's never more evident than in this final Stan of the poem where Tennyson says, when can their glory fade? Oh, the wild charge they made. All the world wondered, honor the charge. They made honor the light brigade Noble six hundred.

He specifically names them the light brigade. He asks the world to remember them, to honor them. And I think that's a really powerful way to end this poem. But Joe, I'd love to know your thoughts specifically on this last answer.

Joe: I I think you're absolutely spot on, and there's a definite shift. In those last few lines, the use of that imperative, verb honor, this is barely a request. It's more of a command really, that listeners take up the cause that they do remember them and remember them in the lights that this poem wants them to be remembered, not just to remember [00:34:00] them as a disaster, but to remember them and to remember them for their bravery, their heroism, their willingness to fight for ideals that people in Britain valued.

I think it's so difficult for us in 2025, looking back to really understand how important this poem is, not only to the period of the time, but to the way we conceive of art influencing. National identity, national pride, because Tennyson in many ways is the quintessential Poet Laureate. He is the longest serving Poet Laureate in British history. And because of course, the Poet Laureate is no longer a lifetime, term, it's now a fixed term of 10 years, he will be the longest serving Poet Laureate. There is, unless of course the rules change in the future, and there are of course, iconic poets before him, the likes of Wordsworth, who, while he had only served a seven year term himself, was this huge poetic figure in his own right. And yet this poem, the timing, the quality of the poem, the speed at which it was produced really shapes what we believe poets writing in the national interest are capable of doing.

And I think that continues right to this day. I mean, when there are major historical or national events [00:35:00] today, death of the Queen, a few years ago being a prominent example, we expect. The national poets, the Poet Laureate, to come out and make some statement to capture the mood of the nation.

What Tennyson is doing here is not only capturing a mood, but changing the mood, reframing the conversation. It's absolutely pivotal to our understanding of the conversation between art and current events to this day.

Maiya: Well, thank you Joe. I think that's a great way to close up, you know, I encountered this poem for the first time, I think, when I was at school doing my GCSEs, so it's really nice to revisit it and kind of really get into the, real grittiness of it because I think it's such a powerful poem.

Next time on Beyond the Verse, we are going to be talking about Small Towns and the River by Mamang Dai.. I am super excited for that episode it will be our final one of this season, season two, so make sure to rate, review, and like our podcast wherever you listen to it. We look forward to seeing you in that final episode. But for now, it's goodbye from me

Joe: and goodbye for me and the whole team at PoemAnalysis.com and team at PoemAnalysis.com. See you next [00:36:00] time.