Odes to the cavalry

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

Cavalry, light of my life, fire of my enemy's nightmares. My spear, my shield. Ca-Val-Ry, a tongue's tour of the mouth from stern to tip to finish in the back. Ca. Val. Ry.

Flashed all their xystons bare
Making haptic their reply
Pennants flutter in the air
Theirs is not to reason why
nor to petty archers spare
Their's but to make my enemies die

Rise like armadillos pale
In unvanquishable mail,
Shake your reins to skewer and soot
Which in charges had grounded put
Ye are on horseback, they are on foot!




That's Nabokov, Tennyson and Shelley, respectively.

Adapt your favorite authors to extoll the virtues of the kings of the ancient battlefields, the scourge of the skirmishers, and the ones who get all the ladies; the cavalry!

[Mrtickles]

Hahahaha man I thought you had written this and I was about to comment on the brilliant poetry and creative use of "armadillo". Gave me a bit of a surprise. Nice post.

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

To clarify, I did write those things. They are modifications of the prose and poetry of the aforementioned authors.

The first is a joyful misquotation of the first few lines of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, which I have subjected to brutal recycling in the honor of my horsemen.

The citrus zest of irony is appearant in the second; for it is Lord Alfred Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade stripped of all its original meaning and meter. It's almost as extreme as what that aureate vandal James Whale did to Mary Shelley's opium fantazy!

Speaking of the delectable Shelleys, the last is of course a play upon Percy Bysshe's Masque of Anarchy, a response to the Peterloo Massacre. The reversal is almost sickening; for the original was a call to arms of the masses. Mine exhorts to the fight the social elite rich enough to buy horses!

Sometimes, it's fun to be an art-contorting jerk for the sake of extolling the virtues of my loyal videogame myrmidons.

[Flavius Silvanus]

Garry Owen/ Custer Died a-Runnin'

by The McDades

You've seen him on the silver screen,
With his yellow hair a flyin'
Calmly he surveys the scene
A good day to be dyin'
Standing on the battlefield
His pistols just a smokin'
They said he was the last to yield
But they must have been jokin'
Like ants they swarmed on his command
Like bees the bullets humming
No time for a final stand
Custer died a-runnin'

They chased him up the hillside
In the bullets and confusion
The overwhelming landslide
Brought it to a quick conclusion
Just who fell first
And who was last
There's no way to be knowin'
But surely through the Gates of Hell
He knew he must be goin'
The devils's danced as he went down
In a hale of arrows coming
Out on the wild Montana ground
Custer died a-runnin'.

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

Excellent selection F.S. A humorous deconstruction of a popular cavalry figure I see.