...And now for a change of pace ---


"The War" (1859)
by Alfred Lord Tennyson


Here is a sound of thunder afar,
Storm in the South that darkens the day,
Storm of battle and thunder of war.
Well if it do not roll our way.
Form! form! Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen form!

Be not deaf to the sound that warns,
Be not guil'd by a despot's plea!
Are figs of thistles, or grapes of thorns?
How should a despot set men free?
Form! form! Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen form!

Let your Reforms for a moment go,
Look to your butts and take good aims.
Better a rotten borough or so,
Then a rotten fleet or a city of flames!
Form! form! Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen form!

Form, be ready to do or die!
Form in Freedom's name and the Queen's!
True, that we have a faithful ally,
But only the Devil knows what he means.
Form! form! Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen form!

from Poetry Daily--
Tennyson's "The War," published in the *London
Times*, on May 9, 1859, while England was watching, aghast, the
Second Italian War of Independence. That enterprise culminated in the
slaughter at the Battle of Solferino with over 25,000 Austrian and
Franco-Piedmontese killed or wounded. The battle also led to the
movement to found the International Red Cross.

Tennyson's drumbeat occasional poem, except for a couple of
unfortunate lines (but Donald Hall has maintained that every fine
poem must contain in it some dreadful flaw) is a rousing huzzah
of sound and sentiment. It is utterly different from the anti-war
occasional free verse most dominant in our times. It reminds us that
all poets do not speak in unity, even with themselves, and have been
perpetually and variously torn asunder by their love of freedom, their
hatred of despots, their respect for sacrifice and honor, their
acknowledgement of "necessary evil," their despair in the face of war,
their hatred of war, their praise of even momentary glory.

No one, Right or Left, Conservative or Liberal, should ever take
poets' voices for granted.

*Dick Allen comments: