Society and the World

So all day long the noise of battle roll’d Among the mountains by the winter sea.

 

Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King— Else, wherefore born?

 

Man’s word is God in man.

 

Here at the quiet limit of the world.

 

Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley’d and thunder’d.

 

Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred.

 

Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.

 

Someone had blundered.

 

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of death Rode the six hundred.

 

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” Was there a man dismay’d?

 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

 

Fresh from brawling courts And dusty purlieus of the law.

 

Fresh from brawling courts And dusty purlieus of the law.

 

Hold thou the good; define it well; For fear divine Philosophy Should push beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

 

And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.

 

Man for the field and woman for the hearth: Man for the sword and for the needle she: Man with the head and woman with the heart: Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion.

 

Man is the hunter; woman is his game.

 

And o’er the hills and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Through all the world she followed him.

 

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

 

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

 

Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.