A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

William Butler Yeats once wrote a pithy verse on the poet’s role during wartime, which he titled “On Being Asked for a War Poem:”

Yeats was direct in his opinion that the poet’s opinion about war is of little consequence. Poets before and since Yeats have, however, refused to be silent about the war, whether in support or opposition to the conflict.

Two such war poems – with vastly different opinions both about the experiences of soldiers, both during wartime and after – that would seem to argue Yeats’ opinion are Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Last of the Light Brigade.”

One of the most famous poems – war poem or otherwise – in the English language, Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” celebrated the British Light Briagade’s ill-fated charge against Russian forces during the Crimean War. Tennyson’s poem, written shortly after the charge, in 1853, finds both heroism and brutality in the story of the Light Brigade’s disastrous maneuver:

Kipling, on the other hand, had found the time at which these soldiers’ glory, so celebrated by Tennyson, could fade. In 1891, he wrote a vastly different war poem than Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade,” one that while much-less renowned, was no less heroic – and much more visceral. In “The Last of the Light Brigade,” Kipling writes about those who survived both the Charge of the Light Brigade and their faded glory and forgotten honor:

Kipling’s bitter verses make light of the fact that while children recite about the charge of the Light Brigade, those who served their country during that battle were starving in the streets.

W.B. Yeats may not have found a place for the poet’s words about war, but Tennyson and Kipling have proven that war poems can both elevate the war experience and reveal its much less celebrated side.