In Cornwall and Across the Sea :: :: University of Virginia Library

Dated the ninth of September—Khartoum—
A letter from Gordon—what had he to say?
It reads like a presage of coming doom,
“While you are all feasting and sleeping away,
With us it is nothing but watch and fight,
Both soldiers and servants, by day and night.”

“Yes! we can hold out four months—and then?
‘Why our hearts are weary with this delay:’
How many times have we written for men?
How many times have ye—not said nay,
But thought not of answer to those who fight
For Egypt—aye England—by day and night.

244

“A handful of English,—and war will cease,
The Arab return to his tents again,
And the fellah from here to the sea have peace;
If you send them not now, you must send them then:
A handful of English—without delay—
O ye who are feasting and sleeping all day.”

Verse 2, line 2, is a literal translation from Gordon's letter.

245

PRAYING FOR GORDON.

[In the Churches of England, Sunday Feb. 8th, 1885.]

Praying for Gordon—if in Khartoum,
Waiting, we know, in his valiant way
At an instant's notice to meet his doom,
A man who has walked with his God alway,
With God for his country, who stood at bay
Forsaken in Africa far away.

Surely God would not forsake his own,
Even though praying there had been none;
But He has promised when two or three
Are gathered together, with them to be:
And our prayers are rising to heaven, we hope,
But our thoughts are straying across the sea
To the handful of English sent out to cope
With a barbarous foe in a far off land,
Wearied with marching on burning sand,
And weak with the wounded of Abou Klea,
But strong in the spirit which aye has brought,
On many a doubtful and desperate day,
The “thin red line,” when it stood at bay,
To hold the “positions,” for which it fought.

246

But hear us, Father, while we pray
For those in peril on the land,
As thou of late heardst those who be
On land, when we were on the sea,
Voyaging past the Red Sea coast,
Abreast of the beleaguered host,
Hear us and stretch a shielding hand
Over thy servant—if in Khartoum,
Waiting, we know, in his valiant way
At an instant's notice to meet his doom,
As ready to face his God as the fray.

Written a few months after the Author's return from Australia by the Red Sea route.

247

GORDON IS DEAD.

Gordon is dead in Khartoum,
Dead ere deliverance came,
Ready we know for his doom,
Yet the disgrace is the same;
Those, who his mission decreed,
Failed him in hour of his need.

Who is to blame for his death?
He whose hand opened the gate?
He whose ball robbed him of breath?
No! those who left him to fate;
Until the voice of the land
Thundered too loud to withstand.

248

Toss in your timorous sleep,
Ye, who had left him to die,
Ye and the women may weep,
England awaits your reply.
“Where is your brother,” cries she,
Answer as Cain did, will ye?

Had we no soldiers to send?
Had we no ships on the sea?
Had we not wealth without end?
Did ye not know what would be?
One thing we had not to spare,
Gordons, like this one, to dare.

Now we have no one to save,
But we must fight for prestige:
Gordon, the bravest of brave,
Could have been saved from his siege,
With but a tithe of the men,
Had they been sent to him then.

249

Yes! we must fight till we win,
Lest the old pride of our name,
Carried from Spain to Pekin,
Lose the fresh gloss of its fame:
And the dark infidel boast,
That he has conquered our host.

“England expects” . . and our men
All do their duty we know,
Heedless of “where” and of “when”—
Once let them march on the foe;
“England expects others too,
Statesmen their duty to do.”

250

“ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA!”

[To the Unfederated Colonies of Australia who are sending Troops to the Soudan.]

A sound from the shimmering towns
On Australia's strand;
A sound from the sheep-studded downs
In the heart of the land;
'Tis a sound they have heard not before,
'Tis the voice of the Spirit of War.

To hardship and peril inured
Is the bush-pioneer,
Who thirst at its worst hath endured,
And who dreads not the spear
Of the native who lurks in the pass,
Or the fang of the snake in the grass.

251

Enamoured of pleasure and ease,
Is the dweller in town,
Of sports in the sun and the breeze,
Till the darkness comes down,
Of dances and dreamy delight
In the balmier air of the night.

But no bushman will stay with his sheep
On the far away downs,
And his pleasure no lounger shall keep
In the shimmering towns
Whom Australia has summoned to go
To the war on her Motherland's foe.

O land of the vine-hidden hill
And the wide-growing wheat,
Where only Peace lingereth still
In the track of our feet,
We rejoice that the Spirit of Pride
In caresses of Peace hath not died.

252

O land of the gold garnished reef
And the sheep-studded plain,
Thou dost not forget us in grief
Or forsake us in pain:
O land of the wool and the wine,
And the corn and the gold, we are thine.

II.

An evil more deadly than war
For the free to deplore,
Is loss of the spirit which fills
Wild morasses and hills
With that feeling of home, that made bold
The Scot and the Switzer of old.

The mother of nations is she
And the friend of the free;
Till free men have fought for one cause,
Not a legion of laws
Can an Athens or England create
Though its rulers declare it a state.

253

III

Go forth, O, our children, and prove
That the peace of the skies
Which shine on the land that you love
Hath not weakened your eyes
For the glare of the lightning which plays
Where the soldier must gather his bays.

Go forth from your east and your west,
From your north and your south,
Be the best in the battle your best,
Share each peril and drouth
That when back in Australia again,
You the comrades of camp may remain.

Is envy to silence her voice,
And your empire to come?
It will be when the rivals rejoice
Over honour brought home,
And lament over comrades in doom
Who may fall in the breach at Khartoum.

254

WAITING FOR WAR.

April 1885.

Yes, we are waiting for war,
Not in old England alone
Swelleth the ominous roar,
Oft in the centuries known,
But from our sons overseas
Echoes are borne on the breeze.

Thought ye the blood of the North
Beat in our pulses no more,
The storm-loving blood which sent forth
Rollo and William of yore,
The blood of the race who were gods,
In scorn of what men reckon odds?

255

II.

We slept till the Muscovite deemed
That the Berserking spirit had died,
But while we were sleeping we dreamed
Of our deeds in the days of our pride,
And now with a wrench for the rust
Our sword from its scabbard is thrust.

We've wealth for the sinews of war,
We've hunger that heroes creates,
We've waited till Patience no more
Could palter with foes at the gates,
And now we are ready to fight,
With hearts that clear conscience makes light.

256

III.

Yes, we are longing to fight.
Peace, with her tortuous ways,
Robs the upright of his right,
Lost in diplomacy's maze
Much have we been, but we know
How to hit out at a foe.

Soldier and stayer-at-home,
Sailor and settler-abroad,
Yearn on that pathway to roam,
Oft by our ancestors trod,
Which through the battle-field leads
Either to death or great deeds.

257

GORDON OF KHARTOUM.

A hero he, born out of his due time
In this peace-grubbing, trade and taxes age,
A man more fit to dignify the page
Of Sophocles or glitter in the rhyme
Of him who drew Horatius—too sublime
For Birmingham and Chelsea—fit to wage
A war to save a people's heritage,
To lead the Scots and Switzers in their prime
Against the great-limbed conqueror of Wales
Or Burgundy's Bold Duke.

To Italy,
Where pride not yet nor patriotism fails,
Thy Mother should have borne thee to outvie
The men who built the nation, which we see,
Which has been Rome and Rome again may be.

258

TO OUR CHILDREN.

“Advance Australia!” Canada advance
To stand beside you mother 'mid the roar
Of battle in the desert. Only war
Can forge a nation: Germany and France
Had to engage with all their puissance
Ere Germany was unified once more;
The conquest of Granada came before
Spain's splendour: but for Salamis perchance
Athens had borne no story and no song:
Great singers of great actions are the fruit,
As witness Chaucer after Poictiers,
And Shakspere the Armada: now, ere long,
A nation in Australia shall root,
An Austral Æschylus attune his lay.

259

ENGLAND AND ATHENS.

I.

Khartoum has gone: Kassala too must go
To show the world that England, if not yet
By statute a republic, can forget
Her allies as republics long ago,
Veered by each puff of party that might blow,
Above, below, within, without,—have set
An infamous example. Great the debt
Not for her writers only, that we owe,
To Athens. She has taught us that a state
Of warlike men whose greatness sprung from war,
In commerce and free institutions great,
May, by an Æschines beguiled, deplore
Freedom and empire lost alike while he
Rises upon the ruin of the free.

260

II.

Athens, an old-world queen of liberty
Enslaved in name of Freedom! Is not she,
A voice from Fate to England: on the sea
Her navies swept imperial: she could vie
With the world's fleets united; could defy
The menace of the nations: she was free
But lost her freedom when she came to be
Pitted against a despot-enemy
Who met the feeble, vacillating sword
Of men who fought for self and party first
And commonweal and country afterward,
With his unwavering phalanxes, that burst
Upon the long-effete Hellenic world
Like thunderbolts from Mount Olympus hurled.

261

III.

Athens and Carthage! What high-hearted boy,
Who reads of antique Greece and Italy
On history's page, but breathes a generous sigh,
When Rome and Sparta triumph, thrills with joy
When Hector does a doughty deed for Troy,
And Hannibal and Conon light the sky,
Darkling to night, with fires of victory,
While Fate their homes advances to destroy?
Athens and Troy and Carthage! We love all
For their brief empire-splendour. But we can
Scarce find a sigh for Athens' second fall
Before the youthful Macedonian
In ardour fresh his mission to fulfil,
While she was impotent for good or ill.

262

TO ENGLAND,

On the Verge of War with Russia.

Imperial England, have thou no alarms!
Not if all Europe look on thee askance,
If war be hurled by Russia, hate by France,
When, at thy first reveillée, spring to arms
Thy children unseduced by safety's charms
In far-off isles, and those who wielded lance
Against thee erst, unsummoned, now advance
To fight beneath thy flag in dusky swarms.
Old Europe grimly smiles to see each whelp,
From the bright South to frozen Labrador,
Couching to leap across the sea to help
The Lion, when he rolls his battle-roar,
And hails the art of Hannibal, in those
Who fill their armies from old Indian foes.

263

HEROUM FILII.

Dedicated to the “Scots Greys.”

I.

O let me tread in these degenerate days
The battle-fields where our forefathers hewed
The fashion of our greatness,—oft imbued
With torrents of red blood, I know, their bays,
With shrieks of anguish often blent their praise,
With tax and tallage, every year renewed,
The land too often groaning in the feud
Of feudal lords or kings' succession-frays.
Give us the want, the bloodshed and the tears
If we may have the glory! Poictiers
Recalls to me its triumph not its cost,
And Balaclava not the anxious fears
Of child and wife and mother far away,
But the grey chargers ploughing through a host.

264

II.

Degenerate days of statesmen not of men!
From Burnabys and Beresfords to clowns
Fresh from the plough and gamins from great towns,
In heat and peril, weariness and pain,
They prove them English of the ancient strain
Who on the fields of Picardy won crowns,
And smote the Russian on Crimean Downs,
And rode with Nelson monarchs on the main.
O happy brother-Teutons, you who have
The man, the giant of the iron will
To guard the greatness of your Fatherland,
Unmoved by hate of Gaul or wile of Sclav,
And with his thunder Party's voice to still
When it is raised against the patriot's hand.