The Charge of the Light Brigade

[JohnLocke]

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
Some one 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.
----
Frighteningly relevant today, isn't it?

[sweetheart]

1. tennyson was spot on with that

invading the crimea to control trade... so familiar,
just another invasion of central asia for commercial resons.

[Yupster]

4. The Crimea is in Europe

but I get your point.

[aquart]

2. Wherever there's an army

The Charge of the Light Brigade is relevant.

[LostInAnomie]

3. White Man's Burden seem appropriate in some places...

It seems to combine that deceitfulness of the Administrations propaganda, and how many of the soldiers feel.
______________________________________________________

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

[JohnLocke]

5. Kick (nt).

[bigtree]

6. More Tennyson

"How say you, war or not?"
"Not war, if possible, O king," I said,"lest from the abuse of war,
The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,
The smoldering homestead, and the household flower
Torn from the lintel-all the common wrong-
And smoke go up thro' which I loom to her
Three times a monster: now she lightens scorn
At him that mars her plan, but then would hate
(And every voice she talk'd with ratify it,
And every face she look'd on justify it)
The general foe. More soluable is this knot,
By gentleness than war. I want her love.
What were I nigher this altho' we dash'd
Your cities into shards and catapults,
She would not love;- or brought her chain'd, a slave,
The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord,
Not ever would she love; but brooding turn
The book of scorn, till all my fitting chance
Were caught within the record of her wrongs,
And crush'd to death: and rather, Sire, than this
I would the old God of war himself were dead,
Forgotten, rustling on his iron hills,
Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck,
Or like an old-world mammoth bulk'd in ice, Not to be molten out."

Excerpt from, "The Princess: A Medley" by, Alfred Tennyson

[JohnLocke]

7. Kick (nt).