O Milan, O the chanting quires,
The giant windows' blazon'd fires,

The height, the space, the gloom, the glory! A mount of marble, a hundred spires!

I climb'd the roofs at break of day;
Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.

I stood among the silent statues,
And statued pinnacles, mute as they.

How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair,
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there

A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys
And snowy dells in a golden air.

Remember how we came at last
To Como; shower and storm and blast
Had blown the lake beyond his limit,
And all was flooded; and how we past

From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head, for half the day,
The rich Virgilian rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume, all the way,

Like ballad-burthen music, kept,
As on The Lariano crept

To that fair port below the castle
Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept;

Or hardly slept, but watch'd awake
A cypress in the moonlight shake,

The moonlight touching o'er a terrace
One tall Agavè above the lake.

What more? we took our last adieu,
And up the snowy Splugen drew,

But ere we reach'd the highest summit

I pluck'd a daisy, I gave it you.

It told of England then to me,
And now it tells of Italy.

O love, we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer across the sea;

So dear a life your arms enfold
Whose crying is a cry for gold:

Yet here to-night in this dark city,
When ill and weary, alone and cold,

I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry,
This nurseling of another sky

Still in the little book you lent me,
And where you tenderly laid it by:

And I forgot the clouded Forth,

The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth,
The bitter east, the misty summer
And gray metropolis of the North.

Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain,
Perchance, to charm a vacant brain,
Perchance, to dream you still beside me,
My fancy fled to the South again.

CII

TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE

COME, when no graver cares employ,
God-father, come and see your boy:

Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.

For, being of that honest few,

Who give the Fiend himself his due,

Should eighty-thousand college-councils Thunder Anathema," friend, at you;

Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,

Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;

Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown

All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine:

For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand;

Where, if below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep,

And on thro' zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep,

We might discuss the Northern sin
Which made a selfish war begin ;

Dispute the claims, arrange the chances;
Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win:

Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood;

Till you should turn to dearer matters,
Dear to the man that is dear to God;

How best to help the slender store,
How mend the dwellings, of the poor;
How gain in life, as life advances,
Valour and charity more and more.

Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet

Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet:

But when the wreath of March has blossom'd, Crocus, anemone, violet,

Or later, pay one visit here,

For those are few we hold as dear;

Nor pay but one, but come for many,

Many and many a happy year.

January 1854.

CIII

WILL

1

O WELL for him whose will is strong!

He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:

For him nor moves the loud world's random mock,
Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound,

Who seems a promontory of rock,

That, compass'd round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd.

2

But ill for him who, bettering not with time,
Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will,
And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime,
Or seeming-genial venial fault,
Recurring and suggesting still!

He seems as one whose footsteps halt,
Toiling in immeasurable sand,
And o'er a weary sultry land,
Far beneath a blazing vault,

Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,
The city sparkles like a grain of salt.

CIV

THE CHARGE

OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

1

HALF a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade 1
Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

2

"Forward, the Light Brigade !"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew

Some one had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3

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.

4

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
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.

5

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.

6

When can their glory fade ?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade.
Noble six hundred !