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Thomas Hardy and Alfred Tennyson wrote two of the most famous pre WW1 poems of all time, Drummer Hodge and Charge of the light brigade. However both of these poems were written in response to newspaper article not personal experience. Tennyson wrote Charge of the light brigade at the end of 1954 regarding the Crimean war. Tennyson uses repetition, allusion, and personification to paint a vivid picture of the charge fearlessly facing the “jaws of death”, and at the same time gives a glimpse into the psyche of the doomed soldiers. Tennyson frequently uses repetition, for example in the first stanza he repeats the phrase “half a league” three times in order to convey the strenuousness of the charge. It relates the fact that each league gained was a separate feat for the brigade. In the first stanza he also begins the repetition of “rode the six hundred,” a phrase which highlights the small number of soldiers riding against the “mouth of hell” itself.
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