He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. You can listen to Tennyson reading the poem here: it’s one of the very first recordings of a poet reading their own work (though not quite the first: that honour goes to Robert Browning). Tennyson’s use of the word ‘left’ (‘All that was left of them, / Left of six hundred’) picks up on the word’s use earlier in the same stanza (‘Cannon to left of them’), but shifts the word’s meaning from a spatial sense to one denoting the sacrifice the men have made.Īs the old line attributed to Bertrand Russell has it, war doesn’t determine who is right – only who is left.

Why are these men, members of this light brigade, being ordered to charge into the heavy cannon-fire of the enemy?Īfter the charge, not much remains of the ‘six hundred’ who rode into battle – nearly half of them had sustained heavy injuries or been killed, while the other half felt that the whole charge had been a colossal waste of life. The absence of ‘the’ from the line also makes it sound a little odd or unnatural, once again suggesting that there is something wrong here. They will do it and die, for queen and country.Īnother line that is often misremembered is ‘Cannon to right of them’, which is sometimes erroneously rendered as ‘Cannon to the right of them’, which disrupts the rigid rhythm of the line (the poem is written largely in dactylic metre): the omission of ‘the’ makes the line sound slightly curtailed and hurried, evoking the rashness of the charge itself. But Tennyson’s point is that there is no question of whether the soldiers will fail to carry out their military duty, even when presented with such a wrongheaded command to charge. The famous line of the poem, ‘Their’s but to do and die’, is often misquoted as ‘Their’s but to do or die’, which gives the poem a different inflection. Many of Tennyson’s Victorian readers would have found such a message comforting, despite some of them – and Tennyson himself – harbouring doubts over the literal truth of Christianity. The ghosts of war reverberate into the present in this deeply moving meditation on mortality.As with much war poetry – and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is, after all, a war poem – Tennyson uses biblical allusions to bring home the grand sacrifice made by the soldiers: ‘the valley of death’ is from the 23rd Psalm (that’s the one that begins ‘The Lord is my shepherd…’): ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’Īs well as contributing to the sonorous note of the poem, this allusion also offers comfort: men may make blunders, but the Lord will see that good overcomes evil. The Light Brigade is a musical interplay of light and dark, soft and heavy, beautiful and frightening. In 'Shot and Shell”, a cavalcade of fingerpicked guitars are embedded in warm synths, and closing track 'Country of Conquest' is a heartbreaking string composition that recalls Shostakovich.

Lead single 'Onward' is a haunting lament layered, melancholy vocals provided by previous collaborator Young Dad wind their way through treated pianos and deep textures creating a mournful ballad of noise. Opening with 'Until Artillery”, an elegiac voice invokes the conflict as glorified in Lord Alfred Tennyson’s infamous poem, backed by electronic swells that build into a poignant climax, contrasting the simple melodies that are the distinction of the album.

The music was written and recorded before the recent troubles broke out in that region, a turn of events which lends an air of requiem to the album. The successor to his 2009 Righteous Fists of Harmony (an EP inspired by the Boxer Rebellion), The Light Brigade recalls the Crimean War of 1853-56. Hailed as the gun-toting spiritual successor to In Death by Road to VR, The Light Brigade promises to deliver physics-based gunplay, hardcore roguelike. The Light Brigade is Daedelus' returns to Brainfeeder, a fitting home for the Los Angeles electronic pioneer.

The light brigade