Second Year 1st semi : Texts Updated 17.1.2014

Charge of the Light Brigade- Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade ?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!


Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. --
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my help less sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

A Far Cry from Africa by Derek Walcott 

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
'Waste no compassion on these separate dead!'
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilizations dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.

Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?

How to Die by  Siegfried Sassoon 

Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns;
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.

You’d think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they’ve been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.

The Good-Morrow by John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.


The fisherman mourned by his wife by Patrick Fernando 
When you were not quite thirty and sun
Had not tanned you in to old-boat brown,
When you were not quite thirty and not begun
To be embittered like the rest, nor grown
Obsessed with death, then would you come
Hot with continence upon the sea,
Chaste as a gull flying pointed home,
In haste to see me!

Now that, being dead, you are beyond detection,
And I need not be discreet, let us confess
It was not love that married us nor affection,
But elders' persuasion, not even loneliness.
Recall how first you were impatient and afraid,
My eye were open in the dark unlike in love,
Trembling, lest in fear, you'll let me go maid,
Trembling on the other hand, for my virginity.

Three months the monsoon thrashed the sea, and you
Remained at home; the sky cracked like a shell
In thunder, and the rain broke through.
At last when pouring ceased the storm winds fell,
When gulls returned new-plumed and wild,
When in our wind-torn flamboyante
New buds broke, I was with child

My face was an while telling you, and voice fell low,
And you seemed full of guilt and not to know
Whether to repent or rejoice over the situation.
You nodded at the ground and went to the sea.
But soon I was to you more than God or temptation,
And so were you to me.

Men come and go, some say they understand,
Our children weep, the youngest think you are fast asleep;
Theirs is fear and wonderment,
You had grown so familiar as my hand,
That I cannot with simple grief
Assuage dismemberment.
Outside the wind despoils of leaf
Trees that it used to nurse;
Once more the flamboyante is torn,
The sky cracks like a shell again,
So someone practical has gone
To make them bring the hearse
Before the rain

SONNET 116	PARAPHRASE
Let me not to the marriage of true minds	Let me not declare any reasons why two
Admit impediments. Love is not love	True-minded people should not be married. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,	Which changes when it finds a change in circumstances,
Or bends with the remover to remove:	Or bends from its firm stand even when a lover is unfaithful:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark	Oh no! it is a lighthouse
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;	That sees storms but it never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,	Love is the guiding north star to every lost ship,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.	Whose value cannot be calculated, although its altitude can be measured.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks	Love is not at the mercy of Time, though physical beauty
Within his bending sickle's compass come:	Comes within the compass of his sickle.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,	Love does not alter with hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.	But, rather, it endures until the last day of life.
If this be error and upon me proved,	If I am proved wrong about these thoughts on love
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.	Then I recant all that I have written, and no man has ever [truly] loved.

SONNET 55	PARAPHRASE
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments	Not marble, nor the gold-plated shrines
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;	Of princes shall outlive the power of poetry;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents	You shall shine more bright in these verses
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.	Than on dust-covered gravestones, ravaged by time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,	When devastating war shall overturn statues,
And broils root out the work of masonry,	And conflicts destroy the mason's handiwork,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn	the cause of war (Mars) nor the effects of war (fire) shall destroy
The living record of your memory.	The living record of your memory (this poem).
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity	Against death and destruction, which render people forgotten,
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room	Shall you push onward; praise of you will always find a place,
Even in the eyes of all posterity	Even in the eyes of future generations
That wear this world out to the ending doom.	That survive until the end of humanity.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,	So, until you arise on Judgment Day,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.	You are immortalized in this poetry, and continue to live in lovers' eyes