greykit.poetry — #ballad
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1898
[oscar-wilde]
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Wilde's long narrative poem in six cantos about the hanging of a soldier at Reading Gaol — anchored in the refrain that each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Danny Deever
A hanging at dawn, told in the whispers of the men paraded to watch it.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Ford o’ Kabul River
A cavalryman grieves the mate he lost fording the river in the dark.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Fuzzy-Wuzzy
A soldier’s backhanded salute to the Sudanese warrior who broke the British square.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Gunga Din
A soldier’s rough tribute to the native water-carrier who outdid them all.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Mandalay
A time-expired soldier in grey London aches for Burma, a girl, and the road east.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Screw-Guns
A mountain-battery gunner’s swagger from the passes of the North-West Frontier.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
The Widow at Windsor
The Empire’s long reach, sung by the men who garrison it for “the Widow” — Queen Victoria.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
The Young British Soldier
A grizzled veteran’s blunt, brutal advice to the raw recruit shipped out East.
-
1889
[rudyard-kipling]
The Ballad of East and West
A border horse-thief and a colonel’s son meet as enemies and part as blood-brothers.
-
1854
[alfred-lord-tennyson]
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Tennyson's galloping tribute to the doomed cavalry charge at Balaclava — half a league onward into the valley of Death, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
-
1849
[edgar-allan-poe]
Annabel Lee
Poe's last poem — a love that began in a kingdom by the sea, that the winged seraphs envied, that no angels in heaven above nor demons under the sea can ever dissever.
-
1820
[john-keats]
La Belle Dame sans Merci
A knight-at-arms palely loitering tells how a faery's child lulled him to cold-hill sleep, where pale kings warned — La Belle Dame sans Merci hath thee in thrall.
-
1798
[samuel-taylor-coleridge]
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
A mariner shoots an albatross and is cursed to wander the earth, telling his tale of guilt, penance, and hard-won grace.