"Forward the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Some one had blundered:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs 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,
Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of death,

Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flashed all their sabers bare,
Flashed as they turned in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered:

Plunged in the battery smoke,

Right through the line they broke ;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the saber stroke

Shattered and sundered:

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them,

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell,

They that had fought so well.

Came through 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?
Oh! the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.

Honor the charge they made;
Honor the Light Brigade,

Noble Six Hundred !

LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.

LADY Clara Vere de Vere,

Of me you shall not win renown :
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired :
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

I know you proud to bear your name, Your pride is yet no mate for mine,

Too proud to care from whence I came. Nor would I break for your sweet sake A heart that doats on truer charms. A simple maiden in her flower

Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

Some meeker pupil you must find,
For were you queen of all that is,

I could not stoop to such a mind.
You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

You put strange memories in my head. Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Laurence dead. Oh! your sweet eyes, your low replies; A great enchantress you may be; But there was that across his throat Which you had hardly cared to see.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

When thus he met his mother's view, She had the passions of her kind,

She spake some certain truths of you. Indeed, I heard one bitter word

That scarce is fit for you to hear;

Her manners had not that repose

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

hall:

There stands a specter in your The guilt of blood is at your door :

You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without remorse, To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fixed a vacant stare,

And slew him with your noble birth.

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,

From yon blue heavens above us bent The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me,

'Tis only noble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.

I know you, Clara Vere de Vere :
You pine among your halls and towers:
The languid light of your proud eyes
Is wearied of the rolling hours.
In glowing health, with boundless wealth,
But sickening of a vague disease,

You know so ill to deal with time,

You needs must play such pranks as these.

Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,

If time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no beggars at your gate,
Nor any poor about your lands?
Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,
Or teach the orphan girl to sew,
Pray Heaven for a human heart,
And let the foolish yeoman go.

THE BROOK.

I SLIP, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever.

ENOCH ARDEN SHIPWRECKED.

THE mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,

The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The luster of the long convolvuluses

That coiled around the stately stems, and ran
Even to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard

The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branched
And blossomed in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail;
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east ;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;

Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again

The scarlet shafts of sunrise, - but no sail.

THE BUGLE SONG.

THE splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits, old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river :
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.