the collapse of the Tay Bridge was to be in twenty-five years’ time.
Your mission, then, is to write up the debacle into a poem that will tell the story, sum up the public mood and stand as a worthy memorial to the brave dead.
What do you do? What sort of preparatory scribbles do you make in your poet’s notebook?
As for metre, short lines, you decide. Falling rhythms of dactyls and trochees would be a good choice, echoing the fierceness and rush of the action and suggesting the cadences of a bugle sounding the charge: Tum-da-da, tum-da-da, tum-da-da dum-da! Tum-dada, tum-da-da, tum-da-da dum! That sort of effect. But as for rhymes…
Hussar is a bummer, only para-rhymes seem to fit: bizarre, beaux arts, faux pas, disbar, ajar, papa and hurrah might do at a pinch, but they hardly promise suitably solemn material; besides, the plural Hussars excludes at least half of them. Lancers is OK: dancers, prancers, answers–some suggestive possibilities there. Dragoons is if anything worse than Hussars: lagoons seems to be the only proper rhyme, the slant-rhyme racoon is unlikely to come in handy, nor are jejune, cartoon and baboon, one feels. Brigade is better, much better. Made, invade, fade, raid, dismayed, laid, all words that might offer some connection with the subject matter. Russian? There’s Prussian which is of no relevance, otherwise there are only bad para-rhymes available, hushin’, cushion, pushin’. Horses gives the rather obvious forces and courses, while steeds offers deeds…Off on their galloping steedsPraise for their marvellous deeds…
Hmmm…bit lame. Rhymes for guns might come in handy. Buns, runs, sons, Huns (shame the enemy are Ruskies), stuns, shuns? Hm, come back to that later. Six hundred and seventy three is simply too long: a whole three-beat line used up.Six hundred and seventy-threeCharging to victory!
Only it isn’t a victory–it is a terrible defeat.Six hundred and seventy-threeCharging for Queen and Country!Oh what a wonder to see,Marvellous gallantrySix hundred and seventy-three!
This is dreadful. Six hundred and seventy-three sounds too perky and too literal at the same time. Should we round it up or down? Six hundred or seven hundred? Hundred doesn’t rhyme with much though–oh, hang on, there are some good slant-rhymes here: thundered, sundered, blundered, wondered, onward.Onward, Light Brigade, OnwardOnward you splendid six-hundred.‘There are the guns to raid,Charge them,’ brave Nolan said.On rode the Light Brigade,Not knowing that Nolan had blundered!
It is getting there. The accidental consonance/assonance of knowing/Nolan is inelegant. But a bit of a polish and who knows?
Your turn now. See if you can come up with some phrases with that metre and those rhyme words, or ones close to them.
Well, as you probably know, Tennyson did not retire from his laureateship and this is what he came up with to mark the calamity.
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.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
