The Dirge of Riders to Certain Death by James Frederick William Rowe

The Dirge of Riders to Certain Death

James Frederick William Rowe

In shrouded night

A standard white

Waved ahead a grim squadron singing           

I shuddered from a chill

As piercing the evening still

Came voices through the valley ringing:      

Broken and black

The horse's clack

Has trod to ruin the road beneath

In ages past

That passed too fast

And neither upon the trees a leaf               

Before us a wall crumbled

The works of men humbled

But mockery we shall not sustain

For what shame can be found

If to death we are bound

For our honour we rather maintain?               

Victory is not demanded

Only to fight is commanded

And our choice is to die with our swords

We will not be ashamed

So for glory acclaimed

We will face down the enemy hordes                   

We ride with spears

Forsaking all fears

We shall charge the enemy dread

And then we will die

And our spirits will fly

As our blood stains the river red                    

So we smile while we might

For we will strike such a sight

More wondrous than is commonly known

And also we can laugh

For who can bear the wrath

Of men who have no thought for their own?             

But enough with the song

We press now along

To make good that which we have boasted in verse

And by dawn's pale light

We will bring such a fight

So that they’ll ‘ever speak our name as a curse            

In morning bright

I saw that proof they were right

Was written on corpses on the ground laid

And I openly wept

For they had kept

All the valourous promises they made

Poet's Notes:  "The Dirge of Riders to Sudden Death" continues my obsession with cavalry.  In some ways, it is a counter-piece to my "Seven Heartbeats and a Hundred Yards," being about the death of a cavalry squadron, rather than a rout.  Though not directly inspired by it, this poem further mirrors the theme of death expressed in Tennyson's famous "The Charge of the Light Brigade," but in contrast to Tennyson, does so without the action of their deaths, but rather through the men singing a song concerning their impending deaths (the titular dirge) that is inherent in their mission, rather than their deaths resulting from a blunder of an order.

The theme of courage in the face of certain hopelessness and death is central to the poem.  That there is no possibility of victory is reflected via the second and third stanza's emphasis on the ruining of their surroundings, which no doubt has provided the occasion for their dire mission.  These men know that they will not be on the victorious side of this conflict.  Freed from the concern that all men have for self-preservation and the condition of victory that might  otherwise temper their valour, they can now throw themselves entirely into battle and so achieve an unsurpassed level of glory and honour.

I frame the poem as if it were heard by the (presumed) poet.  This permits the ghostly opening as well as the concluding stanza to put to rest any doubts concerning their fate, creating a mood of heroic sadness.

The rhyme scheme follows an AABCCB structure.  The alternation of short pairs of consecutive rhyming lines with single longer lines provides an interesting rhythm.  I am especially pleased with the aural qualities of this scheme, and shall have to revisit this structure in future poetry.

In contrast to the rhyme scheme's regularity, the metre is not strict.  The contrast of the shorter rhyming pairs with the longer lines provides a pleasing rhythm, especially as the longer lines' steady count gives the poem structure that a non-metrical rhyme would have lacked.

This poem took a rather long time to compose as a consequence of the rhyme and metrical structures.  Only the first stanza came easily--the rest took a great deal more thought and time.  I find that this is to be expected when I compose more formal poetry.

Editor's Note:  "The Dirge of Riders to Certain Death" first appeared in the March 2012 issue of Big Pulp and was reprinted in Songs of Eretz Poetry E-zine Volume 1, Issue 7 (July 2014).  "Seven Heartbeats and a Hundred Yards" appeared in Songs of Eretz Poetry E-zine Volume 1, Issue 2 (November 2013).  The text of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" may be found here:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174586.