Bayonet Charge written by Ted Hughes
“Bayonet Charge” is set in the First World War from 1914 to 1918. The poem elaborates the situation that many soldiers had to face. Going over the top is when the soldiers would climb out of the trench with their Long knives known as bayonets attached to the end of their rifles and head out on the battlefield to face heavy fire and mortar shells. The first paragraph is about an anonymous soldier in who gets out of the trench and charges ahead a midst the flailing bullets towards the enemy trench. It has a lot of metaphors and adjectives to guide our imagination. The rest of the poem just explains the journey and what the soldier is going through to reach the enemy stronghold (Or Trench). I very much enjoy re-reading this poem because it contains a lot of action and descriptive metaphors to fill my reading needs.
The poem is somewhat written in the same way as Out of the blue as they both contain many rhyming adjectives and also other similarities.”In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations. Is he the hand pointing that second”. This sentence stands out for me as the poem is to do with war the poem makes a reference to soldiers using the stars for navigation and a way of telling the time. There is also a use of personification as the the hand of the clock is referenced as a human hand.
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