There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.
They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!
They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."
They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.
They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.
The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an', we thought we'd call an' tell.
"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."
The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.
O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!
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From guest Reece Magic (contact)
How often this happens. This also happened with Sherman's boys after the american civil war. Many of them went knocking to their old general's door asking for money, and he, being a gracious officer who loved his boys, would give them what he had. It happens to many veterans, as people want to sing their praises, but when they come home, they are strangers. We take it for granted today, but this has happened to the bravest of them, Crimean War, American Civil War, Spanish American War, World War I and II, just to name a few. Loved this poem. Absolutely loved it. Truth is what it is, truth.
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The Last of the Light Brigade?
How soon we forget the generals or the politicians that send the soldiers on their doomed mission. They are the ones who should be held accountable. The soldiers who survive should be supported; they only did what they were trained to do, and they did their best.
Charley Noble -
Kipling frequently spoke and wrote on this theme.
The British Soldier praised to the heavens at time of national need and ignored or shunned when times were good, leaving those same soldiers to suffer worse depredations than they did in war.
Check out his poem Tommy http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/909 -
The Last of the Light Brigade is a poem written in 1881 by Rudyard Kipling in response to Alfred Tennyson's famous poem The Charge of the Light Brigade. It was an attempt to shame the British public by depicting the difficult conditions suffered by the survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade.
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