Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 22:30:07 -0600
From: George Trail <gtrail-AT-UH.EDU>
Subject: Re: PLC: Mot du jour


>George Trail wrote:
>>
>> >And let the music of the swords make them crimson!
>> >Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
>> >Hell blot black for alway the thought "Peace!"
>> >
>> >-------
>> >
>> I take no heed of any weather,
>> The sweets Saints grant I live not long
>>
>> (1856)
>> G
>
>Nice poem; but where's the abyss?
>
>Or could it really stand against Ezra's three lines? You can't persuade
>me that you are serious here. Anyway, here's some more light cavallery
>stuff, three scattered lines (all I've got) from a poem Tennyson wrote,
>as my handbook has it, 1854 on an absurd episode of just another absurd
>kind of Gulf War:
>
>there's not to make reply,
>There's not to reason why,
>There's but to do and die.
>
>So much for the more abysmal side of warfare.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Joerg

Those are not the lines. They are:

"Forward the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
  Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do or die.
Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

Somewhere around 150 survived. You don't want critical thinkers in the cavalry.
G

George Trail
gtrail-AT-uh.edu
U.of Houston