Maud, And Other Poems

MAUD AND OTHER POEMS - CONTENTS - M A U D . . . . . . . . THEBRO0K ANTDYL - . . . . 107 T H E L E T T E R S . . . . . . in ODE ON THE DEATII OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON . l27 THE DAISY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 TO TIIE REV. F. D. MAURICE, . - 151 WILL . . . . . . . . l 5 5 THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE 151 1. I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Its lips in the field above are dabbled with bloodred heath, The red-ribbd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood, And Echo there, whatever is askd her, answers g Death. For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found, His who had given me life - 0 father 0 God was it well - Mangled, and Aattend, and crushd, and dinted into the ground There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell. Did he fiing himself down 2 who knows for a great speculation had faild, And ever he mutterd and maddend, and ever wannd with despair, And out he walkd when the wind like a broken worldling waild, And the flying gold of the ruind woodlands drove thro the air. NAUD. I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirrd By a shuffled step, by a dead weight traiId, by a whisperd fright, And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on C my heart as I heard . The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night. W Villany somewhere whose 2 One says, we are villains all. Not he his honest fame should at least by me be maintaind But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall, Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and draind. 6. Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace we have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own And lust of gain, in the spirit ofCain, is it better or worse Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind, When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesmans ware or his word Is it peace or war CiviI war, as I think, and that of a kind The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword. Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age - why not I have neither hope nor trust ay make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint, Cheat and be cheated, and die who knows we are ashes and dust. Peace s titing under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, When the poor are hovelId and hustled together, each sex, like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie Peace in her vineyard - yes - but a company forges the wine. I And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffians head, Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of tbe trampled wife, While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. And Sleep must lie down armd, for the villanous centre-bits Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights, I While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits To pestle a poisond poison behind his crimson lights. 12. When a Blammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee, And Tirnour-3Iamrnon grins on a pile of childrens bones, Is it peace or war better, war loud war by land and by sea, War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones. 13. For I trust if an enemys fleet came yonder round by the hill, And t. he rushing battle-bolt sang from the threedecker out of the foam, That thesmooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till, And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home. 14...