Part 46 (1/2)

_And yet, dear heart! re thee, Am I not richer than of old?_

WHITTIER

Lxxx ”BREAK, BREAK, BREAK”

LORD TENNYSON

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that hts that arise in me

O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately shi+ps go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me

LxxxI THE ”REVENGE”

A BALLAD OF THE FLEET, 1591

LORD TENNYSON

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, ca frohted fifty-three!”

Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ”'Fore God I am no coward!

But I cannot ear, And the half my men are sick I must fly, but follow quick

We are six shi+ps of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?”

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: ”I know you are no coward; You fly theain

But I've ninetysick ashore

I should count myself the coward if I left thes and the devildoms of Spain”

So Lord Howard past aith five shi+ps of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid theht them all aboard, And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, To the thulory of the Lord

He had only a hundred seaht, And he sail'd away froe sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow

”Shall we fight or shall we fly?

Good Sir Richard, let us know, For to fight is but to die!