Robert Southey (1774–1843) could do almost anything with words, but he decided to do almost everything with words, and that kind of polymorphous squandering rarely allows a writer to leave behind a well-remembered body of work. His friend and fellow Romantic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, called Southey the complete man of letters — as he may have been, if “man of letters” is a slightly sad title, given in courtesy to those who write widely and well without ever achieving greatness.

And so Southey wrote epic poems and love poems and story poems, along with poetic drama, ballads, sonnets, odes, and eclogues. Meanwhile, his torrent of prose volumes reached from histories and biographies to travelogues and polemics. And after his shift toward conservatism, he was appointed Britain’s poet laureate in 1813 — a little out of want of anyone else acceptable, but a distinct improvement on his predecessors Henry James Pye and Thomas Wharton, and a transition to the great Victorian poet laureates of Wordsworth and Tennyson. 

Along the way he did write some lasting verse. His “My Days Among the Dead are Past,” a paean to reading, was Poem of the Day last summer here in The New York Sun, and we offer today “The Battle of Blenheim,” a comic poem with a sting. The poem references a real fight: the 1704 Battle of Blenheim in Germany. It was a major victory for the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession, shifting momentum away from the French and toward the Grand Alliance in that pan-European war.

Quite how the Battle of Blenheim achieved all that is hard to explain, which is the point of Southey’s eleven six-line stanzas of tetrameter verse, rhymed abcbdd. The battle “’twas a famous victory,” the grandfather in the poem keeps telling his grandchildren, without being able to say why it was fought or what came of it — other than the suffering of the peasants overrun by war and the fields full of corpses.

The Battle of Blenheim
by Robert Southey

It was a summer evening,
    Old Kaspar’s work was done,
And he before his cottage door
    Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
    His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
    Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
    In playing there had found;
He came to ask what he had found,
    That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
    Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
    And, with a natural sigh,
“’Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he,
    “Who fell in the great victory.

“I find them in the garden,
    For there’s many here about;
And often when I go to plough,
    The ploughshare turns them out!
For many thousand men,” said he,
    “Were slain in that great victory.”

“Now tell us what ’twas all about,”
    Young Peterkin, he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
    With wonder-waiting eyes;
“Now tell us all about the war,
    And what they fought each other for.”

“It was the English,” Kaspar cried,
    “Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for,
    I could not well make out;
But everybody said,” quoth he,
    “That ’twas a famous victory.

“My father lived at Blenheim then,
    Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
    And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
    Nor had he where to rest his head.

“With fire and sword the country round
    Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
    And new-born baby died;
But things like that, you know, must be
    At every famous victory.

“They say it was a shocking sight
    After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
    Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
    After a famous victory.

“Great praise the Duke of Marlbro’ won,
    And our good Prince Eugene.”
“Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!”
    Said little Wilhelmine.
“Nay . . . nay . . . my little girl,” quoth he,
    “It was a famous victory.

“And everybody praised the Duke
    Who this great fight did win.”
“But what good came of it at last?”
    Quoth little Peterkin.
“Why that I cannot tell,” said he,
    “But ’twas a famous victory.”

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.