Casabianca is a poem

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 by British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Felicia Hemans

-Ancestry:Felicia Heman's paternal grandfather was George Browne of Passage, co. Cork, Ireland; her maternal grandparents were Elizabeth Haydock Wagner of Lancashire and Benedict Paul Wagner , wine importer at 9 Wolstenholme Square, Liverpool. Family legend gave the Wagners a Venetian origin;...

, first published in the New Monthly Magazine for August 1826.

The poem opens:

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

It is written in ballad meter, rhyming abab.

History

The poem commemorates an actual incident that occurred in 1798 during the Battle of the Nile

Battle of the Nile

The Battle of the Nile was a major naval battle fought between British and French fleets at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt from 1–3 August 1798...

 aboard the French ship Orient. The young son Giocante (his age is variously given as ten, twelve and thirteen) of commander Louis de Casabianca remained at his post and perished when the flames caused the magazine

Magazine (artillery)

Magazine is the name for an item or place within which ammunition is stored. It is taken from the Arabic word "makahazin" meaning "warehouse".-Ammunition storage areas:...

 to explode.

Narrative

In Hemans' and other tellings of the story, young Casabianca refuses to desert his post without orders from his father. (It is sometimes said, rather improbably, that he heroically set fire to the magazine to prevent the ship's capture by the British.) It's said that he was seen by English sailors on ships attacking from both sides but how any other details of the incident are known beyond the bare fact of the boy's death, is not clear. Hemans, not purporting to offer a history, but rather a poem inspired by the bare facts, writes:

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though childlike form.

The flames rolled on—he would not go

Without his Father's word;

That father, faint in death below,

His voice no longer heard.

Hemans has him repeatedly, and heart-rendingly, calling to his father for instructions: "'Say, Father, say/If yet my task is done;'" "'Speak, father!' once again he cried/'If I may yet be gone!;'" and "shouted but once more aloud/ 'My father! must I stay?'" Alas, there is, of course, no response.

She concludes by commending the performances of both ship and boy:

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,

That well had borne their part—

But the noblest thing which perished there

Was that young faithful heart.

Cultural impact

This poem was a staple of elementary school readers in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 over a period of about a century spanning, roughly, the 1850s through the 1950s. So often memorized and recited as to lose any shred of meaning or emotion, it is today remembered mostly as a tag line and as a topic of parodies.

McGuffey's New Fourth Eclectic Reader (1866) takes this poem as the topic of Lesson LV. After urging the reader to "Utter distinctly each consonant: terrible, thunders, brave, distant, progress, trust, mangled, burning, bright," it introduces and presents the poem, following it with a set of questions: "What is this story about? Who was Casabianca? By whose side did he stand in the midst of battle? What happened to his father? What took fire? What did the sailors begin to do? What did the little boy do? Why did he stand there amid so much danger? What became of him?"

A boy in Bret Harte

Bret Harte

Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.- Life and career :...

's A Mercury of the Foothill is compared ironically to Casabianca :

Having got under this tree with infinite care, he had made up his mind that he would not move from it until its line of shade reached and touched a certain stone on the trail near him! WHY he did this he did not know, but he clung to his sublime purpose with the courage and tenacity of a youthful Casabianca.

A character in Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh draws an unorthodox moral from the poem:

Then he thought of Casabianca. He had been examined in that poem by his father not long before. 'When only would he leave his position? To whom did he call? Did he get an answer? Why? How many times did he call upon his father? What happened to him? What was the noblest life that perished there? Do you think so? Why do you think so?' And all the rest of it. Of course he thought Casabianca's was the noblest life that perished there; there could be no two opinions about that; it never occurred to him that the moral of the poem was that young people cannot begin too soon to exercise discretion in the obedience they pay to their papa and mamma.

A version of the poem by American poet Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia...

 refers to elements of Hemans's original work as an allegory

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

 for love

Love

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...

.

In History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1984), Kamau Brathwaite alludes to the poem as an example of imperial education and hopes those who have had to recite its lines will be able to express themselves in nation language instead of imposed language (and poetry).

In Peter Weir's

Peter Weir

Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...

 film, Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock (film)

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1975 Australian feature film directed by Peter Weir and starring Anne-Louise Lambert, Helen Morse, Rachel Roberts and Vivean Gray. The film is adapted from the novel of the same name, by author Joan Lindsay....

, a girl quotes the poem when discussing doom, just before her own disappearance; but she forgets more than the first two lines.

In the 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, based on the John Le Carre novel of the same name, Peter Guillam recites the poem in order to test a bugging device.

Parody

Generations of disrespectful schoolchildren, perhaps in accord with Butler's way of thinking, created parodies. One, recalled by Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...

, editor of Best Remembered Poems, went:

The boy stood on the burning deck,

The flames 'round him did roar;

He found a bar of Ivory Soap

And washed himself ashore.

Michael R. Turner, editor of Victorian Parlour Poetry, contributed:

The boy stood in the waiting room,

Whence all but he had fled;

His waistcoat was unbuttoned,

His mouth was gorged with bread...

While a version found in "Oh, How Silly!" (ed. William Cole):

The boy stood on the burning deck

Eating peanuts by the peck;

His father called, he would not go

Because he loved those peanuts so.

A variant from Indiana in the 1930s goes:

The boy stood on the burning deck

Eating peanuts by the peck;

The flames rolled up and licked his chin

And still he poked the peanuts in.

Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan

Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...

also parodied the opening of the poem:

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled -

The twit!

External links

• Full text of the poem at UPenn's Celebration of Women Writers