They say that war never changes— that destruction will follow its waking path. In “Casabianca” by Felicia Dorothea Hemans, we see those flames in the views of an admiral’s naïve son as he sails to his death without a single command to fall back from his deceased father.

The poem has a ballad meter— alternating iambic tetrameter–iambic trimeter— and an ABAB rhyme scheme. The conciseness of the stanzas and lines describe the true story of Admiral Casabianca’s son as he sails the L’Orient to his explosive death at the hands of British soldiers in the Battle of the Nile. It characterizes the son as a brave lad who did not back down from his task when his father and the soldiers around him were deceased. The boy stood on the flaming docks, yelling for orders beyond the booming shots. Yet, tragedy is revealed in the second to last stanza when a “burst of thunder sound” (Line 33) strikes the ship. The boy had been lost, and so was his vessel.

The fact that this poem was written from the perspective of a child who once lived makes its narrative more heartbreaking. Even though the poem highlights his actions as heroic and noble, I find it cruel to even write about this child. This child, who had so much potential, had his life snuffed out by British soldiers attacking from both sides of the ship. He could’ve grown to be anything, but instead, he became another victim of war. And this glorification of war makes me feel sick as it tears up families and lays waste to homes. I understand that our views of war have shifted over the centuries, but there should’ve been some realization that this is messed up! And that’s what hurts the most, especially with the recent wars in this decade.