Boots (poem) Boots (poem) "Boots" is a poem by English author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). It was first published in 1903, in his collection "The Five Nations". "Boots" imagines the repetitive thoughts of a British Army infantryman marching by forced marches in South Africa during the Second Boer War (which had ended in 1902). It has been said that if the first four words in each line are read at the rate of two words to the second, that gives the time to which the British foot soldier was accustomed to march. The poem was set to music for low male
The Charge of the Light Brigade (poem) a traditional structure Tennyson employed in his earlier career but suppressed during the 1840s, worrying that poems like "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (which he initially signed only A.T.) "might prove not to be decorous for a poet laureate". The poem was written after the Light Cavalry Brigade suffered great casualties in the Battle of Balaclava. Tennyson wrote the poem based on two articles published in "The Times": the first, published in November, 1854, provided the phrase "Some one has blunder'd" and thus the meter of the poem. The poem was written in a few minutes on December 2