Standing on the shoulders of giants.

For the last month or so I have been grappling with precisely what to say when I am asked by people how the project I am working on is going. I have struggled mightily with the English language to properly express what it is like - a veritable Captain Ahab facing the Great White Whale. Trust me - that is quite possibly the least pretentious sentence about to be carelessly flung in your direction. We all know that I can be a cantankerously wordy bastard at the best of times. Someone who is overly fond of using turgid, lengthy and frankly pointless sentences to meander around a point. When any sensible person would use a few carefully chosen sentences to cleave right to the heart of the matter at hand. (See what I mean?)

By way of perspective - at the outset I had thought of calling the project "The Sisyphus Initiative" - but frankly the name is on the wrong side of sissy and I have enough trouble being manly at the best of times. Besides - pushing rocks up hill is pretty much a routine part of life in modern society.

Then I thought of calling it the Don Quixote Project - you know, tilting at windmills and dreaming the impossible dream. Unfortunately our giants are rather less imaginary in nature.

So there I am cast adrift on a rhetorical sea of cheap literary metaphors with my life raft getting eaten away by the moment. When it struck me. A poem. A poem that perfectly summarises the mood, the mis en scene. Hey - stop rolling your eyes - I gave your fair warning at the beginning that this was going to get ugly on the language side.

So - given that the poem is out of copyright - I think - I lost track of the latest extension. Is copyright "authors death + infinity years" or just "authors death + when we can't make no more money off of a dead horse"?

Anyway, the poem:

The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

4.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made,
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

Obviously I am not riding a horse into battle - though I would wager that my colleague Karen would be overjoyed to storm the boardroom a-horseback with her sabre flashing! I face little danger other than a deep paper-cut, wounded ego and cirrhosis of the liver. But by George are there days when I limp back home feeling like the end of that poem - well - the bit before glory part anyways!