December 9, 2004 ~ 7:59am
Rode the six hundred
On December 9, 1854, Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," was published in England. Although the poem was written to memorialize the events in the Battle of Balaclava (October 25, 1854), the words still carry a great deal of power today, 150 years later.
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 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.
Those 3 lines of the second stanza have been burned into my thoughts since I first studied this poem in 1992. Sometimes in life all we can do is accept our orders to "do and die".
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