Question

Can it be argued that this is an anti- war poem?

Answer 1

The poet uses imagery to describe the soldiers in war who die fighting for the survival of kingdoms. Is this what human life has come to as a result of war? Worth nothing. The poet’s feelings about war is that they are catastrophically phenomenal, and leave hundreds of people without their homes, and without each other, completely destroyed. Wars affect everyone on a large scale. In ‘After Blenheim’, the poet repeats that the Battle of Blenheim was a huge and great victory for the English. He is saying that he believes that wars always end for one side in a great victory, usually achieved for a good cause but for the other side they are a total failure and the costs are huge. The poet poignantly describes the after effects

“They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;’ 

Wilhelmine even comments that the battle was “a wicked thing,”