write the summary of the poem After Blenheim by Robert Southey ..
Answers
- The poem is set at the site of the Battle of Blenheim (1704), with the questions of two small children about a skull one of them has found. Their grandfather, an old man, tells them of burned homes, civilian casualties, and rotting corpses, while repeatedly calling it "a famous victory".
Answer:
After work, Old Kaspar is sitting before his cottage door while his grandchildren Wilhelmine and Peterkin are playing around nearby.
Suddenly, Peterkin finds something large, smooth and round and comes to his grandfather to know what it is.
Old Kaspar tells them that it is the skull of a man who died in “the great victory”, the Battle of Blenheim.
Wilhelmine and Peterkin wants to know more about the war.
Kaspar gives them an account of horror and disaster with thousands of killings and burning of houses in the war between the English and the French. He describes how his father was a victim of the war and became homeless. But still he calls the war a famous victory for the English.
Wilhelmine and Peterkin find objection with this and call war a “wicked thing”. They question what good came of the war.
Kaspar has no reply to their question but he still believes that it was a great victory.
The poet here highlights the irony in the common man’s idea of war and war-heroes.