Volume I Part 14 (1/2)

2. I am sure that a man ought to read as he would grasp a nettle: do it lightly, and you get molested; grasp it with all your strength, and you feel none of its asperities. There is nothing so horrible as languid study, when you sit looking at the clock, wis.h.i.+ng the time was over, or that somebody would call on you and put you out of your misery. The only way to read with any efficacy is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it.

3. To sit with your Livy before you, and hear the geese cackling that saved the Capitol: and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannae, and heaping them into bushels; and to be so intimately present at the actions you are reading of that when anybody knocks at the door it will take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your own study, or in the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal's weather-beaten face, and admiring the splendor of his single eye.

4. This is the only kind of study which is not tiresome; and almost the only kind which is not useless: this is the knowledge which gets into the system, and which a man carries about and uses like his limbs, without perceiving that it is extraneous, weighty, or inconvenient.

SYDNEY SMITH.

IVRY.

I.

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!

And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre!

Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance, Through the corn-fields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France!

And thou Roch.e.l.le, our own Roch.e.l.le, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy murmuring daughters; As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy; For cold and stiff and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.

Hurrah! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war!

Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre!

II.

Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day, We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array; With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears, There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land; And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand; And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, And good Coligni's h.o.a.ry hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living G.o.d, who rules the fate of war, To fight for his own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.

III.

The king is come to marshal us, in all his armor dressed; And he has bound a snow white plume upon his gallant crest.

He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye, He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.

Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,

Down all our line, a deafening shout, ”G.o.d save our Lord the King!”

”And if my standard bearer fall, as fall full well he may-- For never I saw promise yet of such a b.l.o.o.d.y fray-- Press where you see my white plume s.h.i.+ne amidst the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.”

IV.

Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din, Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.

The fiery duke is p.r.i.c.king fast across Saint-Andre's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, Charge for the golden lilies--upon them with the lance!

A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow- white crest; And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star, Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

V.

Now G.o.d be praised, the day is ours; Mayenne hath turned his rein; D'Aumale hath cried for quarter; the Flemish count is slain; Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale; The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.

And then we thought on vengeance, and all along our van, Remember Saint Bartholomew! was pa.s.sed from man to man.

But out spake gentle Henry--”No Frenchman is my foe; Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go.”

Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friends.h.i.+p or in war, As our sovereign lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre?

VI.

Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day; And many a lordly banner G.o.d gave them for a prey.