THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE1 I HALF a league, half a league, 1 This poem, rapidly thrown off at the moment, and instantaneously popular, was, we are told, suggested by the phrase "Some one had blundered" in the morning's newspaper. "On October 25, 1854, a Russian army had pushed forward to cut off communication between the port of Balaclava and the British force before Sebastopol. A charge by the Brigade of Heavy Cavalry drove back a huge mass of Russian horsemen. Lord Cardigan, who com. manded the Brigade of Light Cavalry, received an order vaguely worded to retake some guns captured by the Russians. The order was misunderstood, but the Light Brigade, knowing that it was riding to its destruction, but refusing to set an example of disobedience, charged, not in the direction of the guns, which they were unable to see, but into the very centre of the Russian army... 'It is magnificent,' said a French general, 'but it is not war' "(Gardiner's Short History of England, iii. 946). The metre may have been unconsciously suggested by Michael Drayton's Ballad of Agincourt, to be found among his Odes, not the long poem called the Battle of Agincourt. The resemblance could hardly have been accidental. "They now to fight are gone, 66 "Forward,1 the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns ! he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade!" Some one had blunder'd: 3 Cannon to right of them, That with [the] cries they make Well it thine age became, To our hid forces; When from a meadow by, The English archery Stuck the French horses," etc. 1 Forward, etc.] 1st edition read: 66 6 'Charge' was the captain's cry, 2 Verse 2 not in 1st edition. Storm'd at with shot and shell, 4 Flash'd all their sabres bare, All the world wonder'd: Plunged in the battery-smoke Reel'd from the sabre-stroke Then they rode back, but not Storm'd at with shot and shell, 6 When can 2 their glory fade? Noble six hundred ! 1 While horse and hero fell.] This line not in 1st edition. Next lines ran: "They that had struck so well Rode thro' the jaws of Death 2 When can, etc.] This stanza not in 1st edition, which closes as follows: "Honour the brave and bold, Long shall the tale be told, |