The Battle of Blenheim

The poem’s first stanza paints an idyllic scene—a pleasant summer evening, a country cottage, an old man resting in the sun outside while his granddaughter plays on the grass. The peace of the scene is hardly disturbed when the man’s grandson finds a large object and asks his grandfather to explain what it is. A darker tone appears in Stanza 3 when Kaspar identifies the “large and smooth and round” (Line 12) object as a human skull and declares it to be the remains of a soldier who was killed “in the great victory” (Line 18). That phrase, along with its variant, “famous victory” (Line 36), is a refrain in the poem, as one of the phrases repeatedly occurs as the last line in seven of the poem’s 11 stanzas.

When Kaspar reveals he has found many skulls in the garden that have appeared during ploughing of the land, his tone is matter-of-fact. It is no surprise to find such relics, he says, since many thousands of men died in the battle. His even tone is contrasted with the eagerness of the young children, who are naturally curious and want to know what the battle was about.