Two pre-20th century poems about war Essay Example

poem, but then suddenly the tone becomes chilling and menacing as one of the children discovers something small and round and Old Kaspar says 'tis some poor fellow's skull'.The tone of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and 'The Battle of Blenheim' is similar in some respects because they both introduce irony into their poems. Robert Southey uses repetition to emphasise the irony in his poem. He does this by ending most of the verses with Old Kaspar saying 'Twas a famous victory'; the opposite of what he really means. Tennyson introduces irony by using the one word 'blundered'. The soldiers' loyalty and courage was charging them to death and not victory.

Robert Southey uses lots of alliteration in his poem, one example of this is in verse five when 'little Wilhelmine looks up with wonder waiting eyes'. Southey uses this alliteration to make 'little Wilhelmine' sound curious, as if she wants to know what happened. Alfred Tennyson also uses alliteration in his poem but not quite so much. In verse five he says 'while the world wondered' as if he was trying to make it sound like an audience was watching.

There are no similes in either of the two poems but there are metaphors and I think this is because a metaphor makes a sentence sound more powerful and dramatic, it also evokes the terror. There are many examples of this in 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'; 'into the valley of death', 'into the jaws of death', 'into the mouth of hell'. Alfred Tennyson also uses imagery to help set the scene on your mind. 'All in the valley of death' helps to create

a picture of what it was like by using metaphors.

Robert Southey does not use any metaphors but there is still imagery contained in the narrative of the poem.There is lots of repetition used in the 'The Battle of Blenheim' which helps to create the ironic effect of the poem. At the ends of verses 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 ,10 and 11 he repeats the phrases 'great victory' and 'famous victory'. By the end of this poem he makes it sound as if this is what he was told the war was like by his parents and that is how he wants it to stay so at very end he quickly says 'twas a famous victory'. Alfred Tennyson uses repetition to make the poem have a dramatic effect but also because it fits into the rhythm of the poem.

'The Battle of Blenheim' is set out in eleven verses with four lines in each verse, this is a typical structure for a ballad with stanzas arranged in it. 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' has six verses with different amounts of lines in nearly every one.