Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, insulting Miles Standish:

While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung at his bosom,

Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it back, as he muttered,

"By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha! but shall speak not!

This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent to destroy us!

He is a little man; let him go and work with the women!"

Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians

Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the forest, Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bow

strings,

Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of their ambush.

But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them

smoothly;

So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days of the fathers.

But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt, and the insult,

All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish,

Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples.

Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard,

Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage

Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it.

Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop,

And like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of December,

Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery

arrows.

Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning,

Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran

before it.

Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket,

Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave

Wattawamat,

Fled not; he was dead.

bullet

Unswerving and swift had a

Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands clutching the greensward,

Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land of his fathers.

Thus the first battle was fought and won by the stalwart Miles Standish.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

THE BATTLE OF IVRY.

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!

And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre! Now let there be the merry sound of music and the dance, Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vales, O pleasant land of France!

And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,

Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters;

As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy, For cold and stiff and still are they who wrought thy

walls annoy.

Hurrah! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of

war.

Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry and King Henry of Navarre!

Oh, how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array;
With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish
spears!

There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our

land!

And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his

hand;

And as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,

And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of

war,

To fight for His own holy Name, and Henry of Navarre.

The King has come to marshal us, in all his armor drest, And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant

crest.

He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;
He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and

high.

Right graciously, he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,

Down all our line, in deafening shout, "God save our lord, the King!"

"And if my standard-bearer fall,-as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,— Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks

of war,

And be your oriflamme, to-day, the helmet of Navarre."

Hurrah! the foes are moving! Hark to the mingled din Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin!

The fiery Duke is pricking fast across Saint André's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne. Now, by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,

Charge for the golden lilies now,-upon them with the lance!

A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,

A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow

white crest,

And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star,

Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

Now, God be praised, the day is ours! Mayenne hath turned his rein,

D'Aumale hath cried for quarter-the Flemish Count is slain;

Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;

The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.

And then we thought on vengeance, and all along our van, "Remember St. Bartholomew!" was passed from man to man;

But out spake gentle Henry then, “No Frenchman is my foe;

Down, down with every foreigner; but let your brethren go.

Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war, As our sovereign lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre!

Ho! maidens of Vienna! Ho! matrons of Lucerne! Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return;

Ho! Philip, send for charity thy Mexican pistoles,

That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls!

Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright!

Ho! burghers of St. Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night!

For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,

And mocked the counsel of the wise and the valor of the

brave.

Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are; And glory to our sovereign lord, King Henry of Navarre! Lord Macaulay.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of death

Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said.
Into the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldiers 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,
Sab'ring 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,