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

15

With willow-weed and mallow.

20

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river;

30

For men may come and men may go,

35

But I go on forever.

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.

40

45

50

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

RING OUT, WILD BELLS

ALFRED TENNYSON

RING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night:
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go:
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more: Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.

5

ΙΟ

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife: Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times:
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite:
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease:
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold:
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

15

20

25

86 THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Ring in the valiant and the free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand:

Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

30

Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air,
Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery smoke,

Right through the line they broke:

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre-stroke

Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

Volleyed and thundered.

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell,

25

30

35

40