APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN

LORD BYRON

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

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Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll! 10
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain,
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

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When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,

And monarchs tremble in their capitals;

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take

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Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

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Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free,

And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: - not so thou,

Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

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Dark heaving; - boundless, endless, and sub

The image of Eternity - the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone 44 Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers — they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, - 'twas a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane

as I do here.

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THE CHRONICLE OF THE DRUM°

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863) was born in Calcutta, but was early sent to England for his education. He attended the famous Charter-house School in London and afterward went to Cambridge. He stayed but a short time at Cambridge, leaving college to study art on the Continent. Fortunately for English letters, he lost his property and was obliged to turn to literature for a living. He was a successful writer for magazines, but was little known till the publication of ‘Vanity Fair,' which stamped him as one of the greatest novelists that England had produced. He later published 'The Adventures of Philip,' 'Pendennis,' 'The Newcomes,' 'Henry Esmond,' and 'The Virginians,' together with minor sketches, essays, and criticisms. A man of infinite kindliness, he yet looked upon the world with the keen eyes of the satirist, and he lashed the sham and hypocrisy of contemporary society with unsparing hand. From time to time in his life, his spirits bubbled over into verse, and though he never took himself seriously as a poet, the restrained tenderness of the Ballad of Bouillabaisse' and the 'Age of Wisdom,' and the rollicking humor of 'Lyra Hibernica' and 'The Ballads of Policeman X' would be hard to match.

PART I

AT Paris, hard by the Maine barriers,

Whoever will choose to repair,

'Midst a dozen of wooden-legged warriors
May haply fall in with old Pierre.
On the sunshiny bench of a tavern

He sits and he prates of old wars,
And moistens his pipe of tobacco

With a drink that is named after Mars.

The beer makes his tongue run the quicker,

And as long as his tap never fails,

Thus over his favorite liquor

Old Peter will tell his old tales.

Says he, 'In my life's ninety summers
Strange changes and chances I've seen,
So here's to all gentlemen drummers

That ever have thumped on a skin.

'Brought up in the art military

For four generations we are;

My ancestors drummed for King Harry,
The Huguenot lad of Navarre.
And as each man in life has his station

According as Fortune may fix,

While Condé was waving the baton,
My grandsire was trolling the sticks.

'Ah! those were the days for commanders! What glories my grandfather won,

Ere bigots and lackeys and panders

The fortunes of France had undone!

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ΙΟ

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In Germany, Flanders, and Holland,
What foeman resisted us then?

No; my grandsire was ever victorious,

My grandsire and Monsieur Turenne.°

'He died and our noble battalions
The jade, fickle Fortune, forsook;
And at Blenheim,° in spite of our valiance,
The victory lay with Malbrook.°

The news it was brought to King Louis;

Corbleu! how his Majesty swore,

When he heard they had taken my grandsire:
And twelve thousand gentlemen more.

'At Namur, Ramillies, and Malplaquet, Were we posted, on plain or in trench: Malbrook only need to attack it,

And away from him scampered we French. Cheer up! 'tis no use to be glum, boys,

'Tis written since fighting begun, That sometimes we fight and we conquer, And sometimes we fight and we run.

'To fight and to run was our fate:

Our fortune and fame had departed.

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And so perished Louis the Great,

Old, lonely, and half broken-hearted.

His coffin they pelted with mud,

His body they tried to lay hands on;