There are a hundred clean-cut, bright things in The Dynasts, and some of the songs are so cunningly fashioned that we know the author must surely have overheard them so often that they have become part of his life. Does the reader remember this from the first volume?—
"In the wild October night-time, when the wind raved round the land,
And the Back-sea met the Front-sea, and our doors were blocked with sand,
And we heard the drub of Dead-man's Bay, where bones of thousands are,
We knew not what the day had done for us at Trafalgar.
(All) Had done,
Had done
For us at Trafalgar!"
Or the other ballad sung by a Peninsular sergeant—
"When we lay where Budmouth Beach is,