Clove into perilous chasms our walls and our poor palisades.

Rifleman, true is your heart, but be sure that your hand be as true!

Sharp is the fire of assault, better aimed are your flank

Twice do we hurl them to earth from the ladders to which they had clung,

Twice from the ditch where they shelter we drive them with hand-grenades;

And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England

blew.

Then on another wild morning another wild earthquake

out-tore

Clean from our lines of defence ten or twelve good paces

or more.

Rifleman, high on the roof, hidden there from the light of

One has leapt up on the breach, crying out: 'Follow me, follow me!'

Mark him — he falls! then another, and him too, and down goes he.

Had they been bold enough then, who can tell but the traitors had won?

Boardings and rafters and doors an embrasure! make way for the gun!

Now double charge it with grape! It is charged and we fire, and they run.

Praise to our Indian brothers, and let the dark face have

his due!

Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few,

Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew,

That ever upon the topmost roof our banner in India blew.

Men will forget what we suffer and not what we do. We

can fight;

But to be soldier all day and be sentinel all thro' the

night—

Ever the mine and assault, our sallies, their lying alarms. Bugles and drums in the darkness, and shoutings and soundings to arms,

Ever the labor of fifty that had to be done by five,

Ever the marvel among us that one should be left alive, Ever the day with its traitorous death from the loopholes

around,

Ever the night with its coffinless corpse to be laid in the

ground,

Heat like the mouth of a hell, or a deluge of cataract

skies,

Stench of old offal decaying, and infinite torment of flies, Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English

field,

Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that would not be healed,

Lopping away of the limb by the pitiful-pitiless knife,Torture and trouble in vain, for it never could save us a

life,

Valor of delicate women who tended the hospital bed, Horror of women in trayail among the dying and dead, Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment for grief,

Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes of relief, Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butchered for all that we knew

Then day and night, day and night, coming down on the still-shattered walls

Millions of musket-bullets, and thousands of cannonballs

But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England

blew.

Hark cannonade, fusillade! is it true what was told by the scout?

Outram and Havelock breaking their way thro' the fell mutineers!

Surely the pibroch of Europe is ringing again in our ears! All on a sudden the garrison utter a jubilant shout, Havelock's glorious Highlanders answer with conquering cheers,

Forth from their holes and their hidings our women and children come out,

Blessing the wholesome white faces of Havelock's good fusileers,

Kissing the war-hardened hand of the Highlander wet with their tears!

Dance to the pibroch!

you? is it you?

saved! we are saved! - is it

Saved by the valor of Havelock, saved by the blessing of

Heaven!

'Hold it for fifteen days!' we have held it for eighty

seven!

And ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of England blew.

WILL.

O WELL for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long;

He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:

For him nor moves the loud world's random mock,
Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound,

Who seems a promontory of rock,

That, compassed round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned.

But ill for him who, bettering not with time, Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will, And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime,

Or seeming-genial venial fault,

Recurring and suggesting still!

He seems as one whose footsteps halt,
Toiling in immeasurable sand,

And o'er a weary sultry land,

Far beneath a blazing vault,

Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,

The city sparkles like a grain of salt.

'BREAK, BREAK, BREAK?

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To the haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me !

ROBERT BROWNING.

FROM THE RING AND THE BOOK.'7

FROM BOOK II., HALF ROME.'

WHO is it dares impugn the natural law,
Deny God's word 'the faithless wife shall die'?
What, are we blind? How can we fail to see,
This crowd of miseries make the man a mark,
Accumulate on one devoted head

For our example?

Its lesson thus

- yours and mine who read 'Henceforward let none dare

Stand, like a natural in the public way,

Letting the very urchins twitch his beard
And tweak his nose, to earn a nickname so,
Of the male-Grissel of the modern Job!'
Had Guido, in the twinkling of an eye,

Summed up the reckoning, promptly paid himself,
That morning when he came up with the pair

At the wayside inn, — exacted his just debt

By aid of what first mattock, pitchfork, axe
Came to hand in the helpful stable-yard,
And with that axe, if providence so pleased,
Cloven each head, by some Rolando-stroke,
In one clean cut from crown to clavicle,
-Slain the priest-gallant, the wife-paramour,
Sticking, for all defence, in each skull's cleft
The rhyme and reason of the stroke thus dealt,
To wit, those letters and last evidence
Of shame, each package in its proper place,
Bidding, who pitied, undistend the skulls,
I say, the world had praised the man. But no!
That were too plain, too straight, too simply just!