Views of War in Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade and Whitman's Drum-TapsEven though Walt Whitman and Alfred, Lord Tennyson Written with different styles and ideals, the common theme of war gave them the same goal: to expose the destructive nature of battle while remaining inspiring and even optimistic. Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" reveals a fatal "mistake" that cost many English soldiers their lives, while asserting that there is immense pride in the unconditional loyalty of British troops. Whitman's Drum-Taps series of poems, particularly “Beat! Beat! Drums! ", documents the tragedies that occurred during the Civil War, while maintaining a sense of hope that the war will help clean up the nation and revitalize it. Despite the outward similarities between "Light Brigade" and Drum-Taps, subtle differences exist between the respective authors' attitudes toward war and the tones that are found in the poems. The extreme pride that Tennyson felt for England as British Poet Laureate influenced his writing, and critics have since attacked the excessive chauvinism that seeps into "Light Brigade" (Marshall 135), as he was incapable of capturing the immense suffering of battle that could only be seen on the front lines, where he never set foot. Conversely, Whitman was able to capture the darker emotions that war generated in his poems because of the prolonged experience he had caring for the wounded and mourning the dead (Golden 106). Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "Beat! Beat! Drums!" appear to be nationalist poems glorifying war, but while Tennyson paints a heroic picture of valiant soldiers waging a just war, Whitman employs a mixture of sarcasm and grim reality to describe...... middle of paper .... .. Jr. . A Tennyson Manual. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1963: 110-135. Shaw, W. David. Alfred Lord Tennyson: the poet in the age of theory. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1996: 25-35. Sweet, Timothy. “Whitman’s Drum-Taps and the Rhetoric of War.” Traces of war: poetry, photography and the crisis of the Union. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990: 11-45. Tennyson, Alfred Lord. “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. New York: WW Norton & Company, 1996: 1954-1955. Thomas, M. Wynn. “Fratricide and Brotherly Love: Whitman and the Civil War.” » ed. Ezra Greenspan. The Cambridge Companion to Walt Whitman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995: 27-44. Whitman, Walt. "Beat! Beat! Drum!" The Norton Anthology: American Literature. New York: WW Norton & Company, 1995: 1004-1005.