God the traitor's hope confound! To this great name of England drink, my friends, [round.

And all her glorious empire, round and

To all our statesmen so they be

True leaders of the land's desire! To both our Houses, may they see Beyond the borough and the shire! We sail'd wherever ship could sail.

We founded many a mighty state; Pray God our greatness may not fail Thro' craven fears of being great! Hands all round!

God the traitor's hope confound! To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,

And the great name of England, round and round.

1852.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE1

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 dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd.
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

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

1 On Dec. 2d he wrote the Charge of the Light Brigade in a few minutes, after reading the description in the Times in which occurred the phrase 'Some one had blundered,' and this was the origin of the metre of his poem." (Life I, 381.)

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.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

December 9, 1854.

THE BROOK

I COME from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery water-break
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

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. 1855.

LYRICS FROM MAUD1

PART I

V

A VOICE by the cedar tree

In the meadow under the Hall!
She is singing an air that is known to

me,

A passionate ballad gallant and gay,
A martial song like a trumpet's call !
Singing alone in the morning of life,
In the happy morning of life and of May,
Singing of men that in battle array,
Ready in heart and ready in hand,
March with banner and bugle and fife
To the death, for their native land.

1 See the Life of Tennyson, I, 393-406.

I kiss'd her slender hand,

She took the kiss sedately; Maud is not seventeen,

But she is tall and stately.

I to cry out on pride

Who have won her favor! O, Maud were sure of heaven If lowliness could save her!

I know the way she went

Home with her maiden posy,

For her feet have touch'd the meadows And left the daisies rosy.

Birds in the high Hall-garden

Were crying and calling to her, Where is Maud, Maud, Maud? One is come to woo her.

Look, a horse at the door,

And little King Charley snarling! Go back, my lord, across the moor, You are not her darling.

XVII

Go not, happy day,

From the shining fields,

Go not, happy day,

Till the maiden yields.

Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South, Roses are her cheeks, And a rose her mouth. When the happy Yes

Falters from her lips, Pass and blush the news Over glowing ships; Over blowing seas,

Over seas at rest, Pass the happy news, Blush it thro' the West; Till the red man dance

By his red cedar-tree, And the red man's babe Leap, beyond the sea. Blush from West to East, Blush from East to West, Till the West is East,

Blush it thro' the West. Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South,

Roses are her cheeks,

And a rose her mouth.

But even then I heard her close the door : The gates of heaven are closed, and she is gone.

There is none like her, none,

Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

O, art thou sighing for Lebanon In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East,

Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased,

Upon a pastoral slope as fair,

And looking to the South and fed
With honey'd rain and delicate air,
And haunted by the starry head

Of her whose gentle will has changed my

skies.

Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cold fires, yet with power to burn and

brand

His nothingness into man.

But now shine on, and what care I Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl

The countercharm of space and hollow sky,

And do accept my madness, and would die

To save from some slight shame one simple girl?—

Would die, for sullen-seeming Death

may give

More life to Love than is or ever was
In our low world, where yet 't is sweet
to live.

Let no one ask me how it came to pass ;
It seems that I am happy, that to me
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,
A purer sapphire melts into the sea.

Not die, but live a life of truest breath, And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs.

O, why should Love, like men in drinking songs,

Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death?

Make answer, Maud my bliss,

Maud made my Maud by that long loving kiss,

Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this?

"The dusky strand of Death inwoven here

With dear Love's tie, makes Love himself more dear."

Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone;

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,

And the musk of the rose is blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,

And the planet of love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves

On a bed of daffodil sky,

To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine
stirr'd

To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"

The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;" And the lily whispers, "I wait."

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead,
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

PART II

II

SEE what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!

What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.

The tiny cell is forlorn,
Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?

Slight, to be crush'd with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand !

Breton, not Briton: here
Like a shipwreck'd man on a coast
Of ancient fable and fear-
Plagued with a flitting to and fro,
A disease, a hard mechanic ghost
That never came from on high
Nor ever arose from below,
But only moves with the moving eye,
Flying along the land and the main-