being a parody of The Charge of the Light Brigade

by  Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809-92

(from The Faber Book of Parodies)
Half a bar, half a bar,

Half a bar onward!

Into an awful ditch

Choir and precentor hitch,

Into a mess of pitch

        They led the Old Hundred.

Trebles to right of them

Tenors to left of them

Basses in front of them

        Bellowed and thundered.

Oh, that precentor’s look,

When the sopranos took

Their own time and hook

        From the Old Hundred!
Screeched all the trebles here,

Boggled the tenors there,

Raising the parson’s hair,

        While his mind wandered;

Theirs not to reason why

This psalm was pitched too high:

Theirs but to gasp and cry

        Out the Old Hundred.

Trebles to right of them,

Tenors to left of them,

Basses in front of them,

        Bellowed and thundered.

Stormed they with shout and yell,

Not wise they sang nor well,

Drowning the sexton’s bell,

        While all the Church wondered.
Dire the precentor’s glare,

Flashed his pitchfork in air

Sounding fresh keys to bear

        Out the Old Hundred.

Swiftly he turned his back,

Reached he his hat from rack,

Then from the screaming pack,

        Himself he sundered.

Tenors to right of him,

Tenors to left of him,

Discords behind him,

        Bellowed and thundered.

Oh, the wild howls they wrought:

Right to the end they fought!

Some tune they sang, but not,

        Not the Old Hundred.
                        ANON.