'T were worth ten years of peaceful life, One glance at their array!

Their light-armed archers far and near
Surveyed the tangled ground,
Their center ranks, with pike and spear,
A twilight forest frowned,

Their barbed horsemen, in the rear,
The stern battalia crowned.
No cymbal clashed, no clarion rang,
Still were the pipe and drum;
Save heavy tread, and armor's clang,
The sullen march was dumb.

There breathed no wind their crests to shake,

Or wave their flags abroad;

Scarce the frail aspen seemed to quake,

That shadowed o'er their road.

Their vawrd scouts no tidings bring,

Can rouse no lurking foe,

Nor spy a trace of living thing,

Save when they stirred the roe;
The host moves like a deep sea wave,
Where rise no rocks its pride to brave,
High swelling, dark, and slow.
The lake is passed, and now they gain
A narrow and a broken plain,
Before the Trosach's rugged jaws ;
And here the horse and spearmen pause,
While, to explore the dangerous glen,
Dive through the pass, the archer men.

At once there rose so wild a yell
Within that dark and narrow dell,
As all the fiends, from heaven that fell,
Had pealed the banner cry of hell!
Forth from the pass in tumult driven,
Like chaff before the wind of heaven,
The archery appear:

For life for life! their flight they ply -
And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry,
And plaids and bonnets waving high,
And broadswords flashing to the sky,
Are maddening in the rear.
Onward they drive, in dreadful race,
Pursuers and pursued ;

Before that tide of flight and chase,
How shall it keep its rooted place,

The spearmen's twilight wood?

- "Down, down," cried Mar, "your lances down!
Bear back both friend and foe!"
Like reeds before the tempest's frown,
That serried grove of lances brown
At once lay leveled low;

And closely shouldering side to side,
The bristling ranks the onset bide.

They come as fleet as forest deer,
We'll drive them back as tame."
Bearing before them, in their course,
The relics of the archer force,
Like wave with crest of sparkling foam,
Right onward did Clan-Alpine cone.
Above the tide, each broadsword bright
Was brandishing like beam of light,

Each targe was dark below;
And with the ocean's mighty swing,
When heaving to the tempest's wing,
They hurled them on the foe.

I heard the lance's shivering crash,
As when the whirlwind rends the ash;
I heard the broadsword's deadly clang,
As if a hundred anvils rang!

But Moray wheeled his rearward rank
Of horsemen on Clan-Alpine's flank-

I

"My bannerman, advance!

see, e," he cried, "their columns shake. Now, gallants! for your ladies' sake, Upon them with the lance!" The horsemen dashed among the rout,

As deer break through the broom; Their steeds are stout, their swords are out, They soon make lightsome room. Clan-Alpine's best are backward borne — Where, where was Roderick then? One blast upon his bugle-horn

Were worth a thousand men! And refluent through the pass of fear The battle's tide was poured; Vanished the Saxon's struggling spear, Vanished the mountain sword. As Bracklinn's chasm, so black and steep, Receives her roaring linn,

As the dark caverns of the deep

Suck the wild whirlpool in,
So did the deep and darksome pass
Devour the battle's mingled mass;
None linger now upon the plain,
Save those who ne'er shall fight again.

WATERLOO.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

FROM "CHILDE HAROLD."

THERE was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage-bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn:

As dropped the dying and the dead.
Fast as their ranks the thunders tear,
Fast they renewed each serried square ;
And on the wounded and the slain
Closed their diminished files again,
Till from their lines scarce spears' lengths three,
Emerging from the smoke they see
Helmet and plume and panoply.

Then waked their fire at once!
Each musketeer's revolving knell
As fast, as regularly fell,
As when they practice to display
Their discipline on festal day.

gone;

The bars survive the captive they inthrall; The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;

And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on;

Even as a broken mirror, which the glass In every fragment multiplies, and makes A thousand images of one that was The same, and still the more, the more it breaks; And thus the heart will do which not forsakes, Living in shattered guise, and still, and cold, And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches, Yet withers on till all without is old, Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.

THE CHARGE AT WATERLOO.

ON came the whirlwind, like the last
But fiercest sweep of tempest-blast;
On came the whirlwind,

BYRON.

steel-gleams broke Like lightning through the rolling smoke;

The war was waked anew.

Three hundred cannon-mouths roared loud,
And from their throats, with flash and cloud,
Their showers of iron threw.
Beneath their fire, in full career,
Rushed on the ponderous cuirassier,
The lancer couched his ruthless spear,
And, hurrying as to havoc near,
The cohorts' eagles flew.

In one dark torrent, broad and strong,
The advancing onset rolled along,
Forth harbingered by fierce acclaim,
That, from the shroud of smoke and flame,
Pealed wildly the imperial name.
But on the British heart were lost
The terrors of the charging host;
For not an eye the storm that viewed
Changed its proud glance of fortitude,

Then down went helm and lance,

Down reeling steeds and riders went,
Corselets were pierced and pennons rent;
And, to augment the fray,
Wheeled full against their staggering flanks,
The English horsemen's foaming ranks
Forced their resistless way.
Then to the musket-knell succeeds
The clash of swords, the neigh of steeds;
As plies the smith his clanging trade,
Against the cuirass rang the blade;
And while amid their close array
The well-served cannon rent their way,
And while amid their scattered band
Raged the fierce rider's bloody brand,
Recoiled in common rout and fear
Lancer and guard and cuirassier,
Horsemen and foot, -a mingled host,
Their leaders fallen, their standards lost.

MONTEREY.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

WE were not many, we who stood
Before the iron sleet that day;
Yet many a gallant spirit would
Give half his years if but he could

Have been with us at Monterey.

Now here, now there, the shot it hailed
In deadly drifts of fiery spray,

Yet not a single soldier quailed
When wounded comrades round them wailed
Their dying shout at Monterey.

And on, still on our column kept,

Through walls of flame, its withering way; Where fell the dead, the living stept, Still charging on the guns which swept The slippery streets of Monterey.

The foe himself recoiled aghast,

When, striking where he strongest lay,

O THE charge at Balaklava!

O that rash and fatal charge!
Never was a fiercer, braver,
Than that charge at Balaklava,

On the battle's bloody marge!
All the day the Russian columns,

Fortress huge, and blazing banks, Poured their dread destructive volumes

On the French and English ranks, — On the gallant allied ranks! Earth and sky seemed rent asunder By the loud incessant thunder! When a strange but stern command Needless, heedless, rash command Came to Lucan's little band, Scarce six hundred men and horses Of those vast contending forces :'England's lost unless you save her! Charge the pass at Balaklava!"

:

O that rash and fatal charge, On the battle's bloody marge!

Far away the Russian Eagles

Soar o'er smoking hill and dell,
And their hordes, like howling beagles,
Dense and countless, round them yell!
Thundering cannon, deadly mortar,
Sweep the field in every quarter!
Never, since the days of Jesus,
Trembled so the Chersonesus!

Here behold the Gallic Lilies —
Stout St. Louis' golden Lilies -
Float as erst at old Ramillies!
And beside them, lo! the Lion!
With her trophied Cross, is flying!
Glorious standards! - shall they waver
On the field of Balaklava?

Now the bolts of volleyed thunder
Rend that little band asunder,
Steed and rider wildly screaming,

Screaming wildly, sink away;
Late so proudly, proudly gleaming,
Now but lifeless clods of clay,
Now but bleeding clods of clay!
Never, since the days of Jesus,
Saw such sight the Chersonesus!
Yet your remnant, brave Six Hundred,
Presses onward, onward, onward,

Till they storm the bloody pass, Till, like brave Leonidas, They storm the deadly pass, Sabering Cossack, Calmuck, Kalli, In that wild shot-rended valley, Drenched with fire and blood, like lava, Awful pass at Balaklava!

O that rash and fatal charge, On the battle's bloody marge!

For now Russia's rallied forces,
Swarming hordes of Cossack horses,
Trampling o'er the reeking corses,

Drive the thinned assailants back,
Drive the feeble remnant back,
O'er their late heroic track!
Vain, alas! now rent and sundered,
Vain your struggles, brave Two Hundred !