comparison between the charge of the light brigade and the falling leaves

Comparison Between ‘The charge of the Light Brigade’ and ‘the Falling Leaves.’
A similarity between the poems ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ and ‘the falling leaves’ is how they both focus all attention on the destructiveness and horror of war. In "The Charge of the Light Brigade" the destructiveness of war is highlighted through the use of imagery. One example of this was when Tennyson was describing the Brigade as riding "Into the jaws of Death/Into the mouth of Hell" which shows that perhaps even though they knew they were going to die they rode onwards anyway, the image itself of "the jaws of Death" is quite scary and adds to the impact that Tennyson is trying to get across. While Tennyson uses quite horrific imagery, Cole is a lot more subtle in the way she describes the death toll in her poem; she actually compares them to leaves and snowflakes. The metaphors "I saw the brown leaves dropping from their tree" and "They fell, like snowflakes wiping out the noon" compare the likeness between leaves, snowflakes and soldiers - leaves fall in autumn, snowflakes fall in winter and soldiers fall in war, in the case of the soldier by fall the poet is trying to get across the fact that they die and just how impermanent the soldiers are as leaves die after one year and snow will only usually last about a week, the poet is showing the shortness of the soldiers' lives and how horrific it is. However at the same time it may actually show that she respects the soldiers for what they are doing and believes that war is just a part of life, like leaves falling from trees and snowflakes falling from clouds are. It also shows that she believes the soldiers should be remembered. When we think of leaves and snowflakes we think of them as harmless, by comparing the soldiers to leaves and snowflakes the poet it implying that the soldiers are harmless and innocent.
Despite the obviousness of the difference that ‘the charge of the light brigade’ was written by a man and ‘the falling leaves’ by a lady, this point actually goes deeper than that. In most wars or battles in history, it was the men fighting and the women back at home worrying. So both poems are about fighting and war, but ‘the charge of the light brigade’ is written in chronological order of how the battle was fought, and ‘the falling leaves’ is the feelings of the women at home and how Cole couldn’t get the war off her mind. ‘The falling leaves’ also shows the devastation and the heartbreak the war causes not only to the soldiers, but to the sisters, wife’s, mothers and daughters left at home.
Tennyson doesn't use much rhyme in his poem but the words he does use rhyme on help to emphasise the point he is trying to get across to the reader. For example he rhymes the two words "hundred" and "blunder'd" which illustrates two things; the huge amount of people that were killed and also the reason why these people died due to miscommunications. Whereas Cole in "The Falling Leaves" uses an ABCABCDEFDEF rhyming scheme which is completely different to "The Charge of the Light Brigade".
In "The Charge of the Light Brigade" there are six stanzas whereas "The falling Leaves" only has one stanza. Alfred Tennyson uses each of the six stanzas like a different chapter in a book because each stanza is describing a different event in the battle, this separates the poem for us and helps to organise our thoughts. Each stanza also gets more horrifying and bloody as the poem goes on which shows Tennyson is using the stanzas to build up the point that these men should not be forgotten. However Margaret Cole in "The Falling Leaves” only wrote one stanza with one sentence which is split into two parts; the half which describes what she sees and the half which describes what she thinks. The fact that it is all one sentence suggests that it was a train of thought that had been on her mind for a little while and she needed to get it off her chest which is why it all seems to come out so quickly - this suggests that as it had been on her mind for quite some time the war was quite horrific to leave such an impression on her.