The Discharged Soldier

In the decades after the french revolution, veterans were returning to britain from the battle fields of europe and greeted as heroes. There's a certain sort of appetite for gory and exciting tales of war. The poet wordsworth gives us an example of this. In 17 98, he wrote a poem called the discharged soldier, about a soldier coming home from the french revolutionary wars. It ended up in the prelude his huge autobiographical poem.