Forward, the Light Brigade!' Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew

Some one had blunder'd: Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while

All the world wonder'd: Plunged in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian

Reel'd from the sabre-stroke

Shatter'd and sunder'd.

Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them

Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell,

They that had fought so well

Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Tennyson.

LXVIII

THE USE OF WAR

WHY do they prate of the blessings of Peace? We have made them a curse,

Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;

And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or

worse

Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,

When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine,

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;

Peace in her vineyard-yes!-but a company forges

the wine.

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's

head,

And the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the

trampled wife,

And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,

And the spirit of murder works in the very means

of life,

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,

And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones,

Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and sea,

War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.

For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill

And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the threedecker out of the foam,

That the smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,

And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home!

Lord Tennyson.

LXIX

THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS

LAST night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed, and swore;

A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.
To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,
He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,
And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
Bewildered, and alone,

A heart, with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.

Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
Bring cord, or axe, or flame:

He only knows, that not through him
Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seemed,
Like dreams, to come and go;

Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed,
One sheet of living snow;

The smoke, above his father's door,
In grey soft eddyings hung:
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doomed by himself, so young?

Yes, honour calls!—with strength like steel
He put the vision by.

Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
An English lad must die.

And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent,
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
To his red grave he went.

Vain, mightiest fleets of iron framed;
Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untamed,
The strong heart of her sons.

So, let his name through Europe ring-
A man of mean estate,

Who died, as firm as Sparta's king,

Because his soul was great.

Sir Francis Hastings Doyle.

LXX

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

O, to be in England,

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf,

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England-now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows-
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
Robert Browning.

LXXI

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA

NOBLY, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the North-West died away;

Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz

Bay;

Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar

lay;

In the dimmest North-East distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey;

'Here and here did England help me how can I help England?'—say,

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,

While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. Robert Browning.

LXXII

A SONG OF ENGLAND

THERE'S a land, a dear land, where the rights of the free,

Though firm as the earth are as wide as the sea;