"Its pageantry and show!" Roll--roll!--"What is it that ye beat?" "We sound the charge!--On with the courser fleet!-- Where 'mid the columns, red war's eagles fly, We swear to do or die!-- 'T is this which feeds the fires of Fame with breath, Which steels the soldier's heart to deeds of death; And when his hand, Fatigued with slaughter, pauses o'er the slain, 'T is this which prompts him madly once again To seize the bloody brand!" Roll--roll!--"Brothers, what do ye here, Slowly and sadly as ye pass along, With your dull march and low funereal song?" "Comrade! we bear a bier! I saw him fall! And, as he lay beneath his steed, one thought, (Strange how the mind such fancy should have wrought!) That, had he died beneath his native skies, Perchance some gentle bride had closed his eyes And wept beside his pall!" G. W. Patten. CXC. THE BATTLE OF IVRY. 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 the dance, Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vales, O pleasant land of France! And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning 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 King Henry of Navarre! O! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day, We saw the army of the League draw 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 hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war, To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.