Josh Clark
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And apparently Tennyson recorded himself reading this on a wax cylinder.
There's places on the internet, including YouTube, I believe, where you can hear it.
And it bears an uncanny resemblance to that... Remember that doll in the dolls episode?
The old-timey talking doll from the 19th century?
It sounds a little bit like that.
But even getting past that, he...
I don't think he does a very good job reading it.
It's the worst reading I've heard of that ever.
So way to go, man.
I've been secretly lobbying for you to be named Poet Laureate of the U.S.
Kipling wrote another one, The Last of the Light Brigade, that actually commemorates the charge of the heavy brigade at Balaclava in Tennyson's writing of it.
And Tennyson actually makes an appearance in this Kipling poem.
But both of them were basically for the same reason, to call attention to the fact that these Crimean war veterans had just been totally abandoned by their nations.