Mmmmmmmmmm, piiiiiiieeee....!



I suspect that the poem vanished from school anthologies after World War II because, first, strictly as a poem, its diction and imagery are pretty conventional (Tennyson dashed it off in just a few minutes after reading an account of the charge in the Times.) For hard-bitten readers of poetry, the poem began to seem artificial. Second, given the circumstances of the charge, the sentiment "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do or die," was starting to ring problematical in the modern era with its far greater slaughters at places like the Somme and Okinawa. (It wasn't universally accepted in the Victorian Age, either, since, as Tennyson himself said, "someone [in command] had blundered."   And more than one "someone," at that!)

Anyway, the survivors of the disaster were treated so shabbily by their government and society that Tennyson, the Poet Laureate for God's sake, felt compelled to write a brief sequel twenty years on commenting on the fact.

The last British horse soldier to survive the charge didn't "fade away" until the Jazz Age.