Reviewed
Oct 01 2008
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3 reviews
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history, poetry
• poetryarchive.org
Good Heavens - an actual Tennyson sighting. This was a most important poem in its day (an actual source of news, "distributed" verbally in pubs where there were no papers), and despite the military futility, correctly celebrates a demonstration of English skill and courage, as well as lightly damning military command incompetence. Despite being outnumbered on the order of ten (or more) to one, the Brits did, in fact, break through the Russian line. Of course, there was nowhere to go then but back, but the six hundred (673 actually) weren't slaughtered. The KIA and wounded total was under 300.
