Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the Poet Supreme

Tune: Maurice Abrahams's "He'd Have to Get Under – Get Out and Get Under (to Fix Up His Automobile)"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the poet supreme,
Read all the papers for the wartime headlines,
Casting about to find a suitable theme
Good for a stanza or six.

Cardigan's charge was like a lyrical dream!
Nevertheless, it had a ten-ton drawback:
Sadly, the Light Brigade's harrowing escapades
Put the old boy in a fix—

When Tennyson wondered,
"Had somebody blundered?
And was Crimea a crime?"
He had to struggle to think of a rhyme
(Like, maybe, guava
For Balaclava?)

So heavens were sundered
With cannon that thundered
To paint the frightful ordeal.
You mustn't razz the Bard (or razz the Bard again)
For rhyming nothing with Lord Cardigan—
He borrowed or plundered
Some rhymes for six hundred,
So no one's entitled to squeal!