When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
* * * * *
THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.
[September 25, 1857.]
O, that last day in Lucknow fort!
We knew that it was the last;
That the enemy's lines crept surely on.
And the end was coming fast.
To yield to that foe meant worse than death;
And the men and we all worked on;
It was one day more of smoke and roar,
And then it would all be done.
There was one of us, a corporal's wife,
A fair, young, gentle thing,
Wasted with fever in the siege.
And her mind was wandering.
She lay on the ground, in her Scottish plaid,
And I took her head on my knee;
"When my father comes hame frae the pleugh," she said,
"Oh! then please wauken me."
She slept like a child on her father's floor,
In the flecking of woodbine-shade,
When the house-dog sprawls by the open door,
And the mother's wheel is stayed.
It was smoke and roar and powder-stench,
And hopeless waiting for death;
And the soldier's wife, like a full-tired child,
Seemed scarce to draw her breath.
I sank to sleep; and I had my dream
Of an English village-lane.
And wall and garden;--but one wild scream
Brought me back to the roar again.
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