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

We workers, who toil in the grimy town,
Have heard of the drones who will spend the day
In galloping over the breezy down,
Or sailing about on the bright blue bay,
Or striving the strenuous hours away
In matches at cricket and games at fives,
Or hunting or shooting or——all in play,
While we are in slavery all our lives.

We workers, who toil in the grimy town,
Have heard of the drones who will spend the day
In changes and changes of suit and gown,
And vying each other in vain display,
And lounging and lunching and idle say,—
Old bachelors wooing to wild young wives,
Young bachelors losing their lands at play—
While we are in slavery all our lives.

204

We workers, who toil in the grimy town,
Have heard of the drones who will spend the day
In dreaming away by the waters brown
When summer is singing his roundelay,
And over the fire, when in widow-grey
The winter once more from the north arrives,
Just prating of Letters and Art in play,
While we are in slavery all our lives.

Envoy.

We wonder what profit is theirs and say,
“These indolent drones with their wasteful wives,
They shall not endure in their endless play,
While we are in slavery all our lives.”

205

A BALLAD OF PAIN.

The “Ballad of Pleasure” was finished at 1 a.m. on feb. 1st 1885: at 9 a.m. “Bob” was found dead in his Cradle.

My heart was overfull with joy,
As late I sat one winternight,
Exulting that my two-months' boy
Should now receive the chrystom rite;
But, when the morrow morn was light,
My heart was overfull with pain,
For there I found him stiff and white,
The babe who never moved again.

206

My heart was overfull with joy,
As late I sat one winternight,
Exulting o'er a two-days' toy,
A ballad ready now to write;
But, ere the sun had climbed his height,
My song was in another strain,
For there I found him stiff and white,
The babe who never moved again.

My heart was overfull with joy,
As late I sat one winternight,
Two hours of gold without alloy
To pass with maidens boon and bright;
At morn I saw another sight
Than maidens fair and maidens fain,
For there I found him stiff and white,
The babe who never moved again.

207

Envoy.

Many a sight of joy and light
May I forget, but not the pain
With which I found him stiff and white.
The babe who never moved again.

208

A BALLAD OF A GRAVEYARD.

To William Nimmo, Esq., a College-Friend of the Author.]

The Graveyard looks on Mary's Church;
And Mary's Church looks on the sea;
And there I found with loving search,
Not far off from a cypress-tree,
A bed for his mortality,
Within the echo of the main,
Our gleaming link that is to be,
When we are overseas again.

209

The Graveyard looks on Mary's Church;
And Mary's Church looks on the sea;
The rain the chapel panes did smirch
While I knelt down in agony,—
I, and one college friend with me,
Oft mate in pleasure, now in pain,
And comrade oft, I trust, to be
When we are overseas again.

The Graveyard looks on Mary's Church;
And Mary's Church looks on the sea;
And there we sowed 'mid pine and birch
A seed of immortality.
And I, where'er on earth I be,
Shall never hear the sounding main
Without this solemn memory,
When we are overseas again.

210

Envoy.

We sowed his small mortality
To sight the church which sights the main,
Our link with him that is to be
When we are overseas again.

211

MAIDENHOOD

—A SERENADE.

My Lady she loves me, she loves to be near,
She tells me—and oft—that my friendship is dear;
But, if I dare whisper one hint of my love,
Turns cold as the Lady of Even above.

Her heart is as warm as the Lord of the Day,
Her sunshine is clouded when I am away,
And yet if I venture that question to ask
Which, granted, allows her for ever to bask,

She flies to the shadow, which bashfulness throws
To check the sun's fervour from forcing the rose;
And days of coy wooing but slowly recall
The sunshine of friendship when shadows befall.

212

Were women as sunny, in wooing as we,
The shadows which chequer our courtship would flee;
Were men but as mooncold in wooing, their lives
Would seldom be lit with the sunshine of wives.

She loves me, my lady:—she stays in the sun,
Though doubting, for aid, to the shadows to run;
The rosebud is blushing to ope to the heat,
And the scent, as she bursts into blossom, is sweet.

My lady, she loves me, and whispers it oft,
Not timid and cold now but timid and soft;
Both morning and even her sun she'd have light,
Like the sun of the north upon midsummer night.

213

UNDER THE MISTLETOE.

Why did he kiss her not? because he loved her;
Because an angry word, a struggle vain,
Might breed a coldness which should long remain:
The blushing maid but strove, as it behoved her.

Would it have pleased him, had she yielded lightly
To every lip, which sought her cheek to taste,
Under the mistletoe by frolic placed
Over the door, while laughter echoed brightly?

Why no! she had his worship: it would waken
A rude surprise to see his Artemis,
From the high-places where he shrined her, taken,
As if she were no coyer than Cypris,
And the pure dew from off her sweet mouth shaken,
The virgin dew, by mirth and mischief's kiss.

214

II.

Why did she let him not? because she loved him,
Because if he, why not some others too,
Because she'd have him think her chaste and true:
Why did he try? because it so behoved him.

For had he not long worship to her offered,
Smiled with her smiles, grieved with her griefs, and talked
Sweet music of the heart, as oft they walked,
And love in every speech but tongue-speech proffered?

Would she have let him with none by to see her?
Yes! had he dared defy her first fierce speech,
Pinion her struggles, flat-refuse to free her,
Kiss off her shame and anger, then beseech
Her love in spoken words, he might decree her
Submissive lips and hands to him to reach.

215

III.

Under the mistletoe, who holds her hands now
Out-stretched submissively, and yields her lips,
Without demur, to love's repeated sips,
Delighting in her newly-fitted bands now?

Is this the girl-Lucretia, who repelled him,
With crimson-mantling cheek and shrinking form,
And with reproach half-pleading and half-warm,
So that half-fear, half-penitence withheld him?

If she had suffered him in jest, she could not
Have yielded him so full a gift in fee;
If he had plundered her in jest, he would not
Have found his feast so rich when he was free,
And though his will in wrath she had withstood not,
Without the grace of self restrained would be.

216

KING CHARLIE.

[Written upon the Third Birthday of the Author's Son.]

Charles the Bold and Charles the Bad,
Charles the Great and the Victorious,
Set beside this little lad,
Where are now your triumphs glorious—
If the living dog is held
Better than the slaughtered Lion,
As the prophet wrote of eld?
Ye are shadows like Ixion.

217

Charles the Martyr, Charles the Mad,
Charles the Swede and Charles the Hammer,
Ye, for all the pow'r ye had
Not one syllable can stammer.
Yonder boy, in slumber calm
Dreaming of some fairy story,
Has more strength in his right arm
Than have ye for all your glory.

With the fair white robes of youth,
Childhood's golden crown upon him,
Only the bright side of truth
Told him yet, do we enthrone him.
Use thy power well, small king!
Thou hast all the world before thee;
If thou lose it dallying,
We can never quite restore thee.

218

Are their names remembered still,
Having gone not as their cares have?
Yes, for few do deeds that will
Stand the test of time as theirs have.
Yet these Charleses, in their day,
Though the world could scarce contain them,
Now that they have passed away,
Little board-school boys arraign them.

Child King Charlie, anxious eyes
On thy future are directed:
Is the monarch we so prize
Worthily a king elected?
Who shall tell us,—if there be
No such thing as after-life time,
If no resting-place have we
After labour-time and strife-time?

219

Charles the Swede and Charles Martel,
Charles the Great and the Victorious,
History hath loved you well;
May this small king be as glorious!
May your good alone proceed,
And this child illuminate,
Charles Martel and Charles the Swede,
The Victorious and the Great!

220

TO A LADY ON HER TWENTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY.

E. M. N.

I knew you when, scarce more than child,
You had but now left school,
A little shy, a little wild,
A madcap of misrule.

I treasure yet the greeting smile,
The dainty change of hue,
That fluttered through your cheeks awhile
At our first interview.

Welcome and graciousness were writ
As now upon your face,
Although you had not all your wit
Or all your present grace.

221

By you I lived two golden years
Beneath a cloudless sky,
Without a thought of wrath or tears,
In closest sympathy.

I watched the growth of that sweet flower
We call your womanhood,
Saw it develop hour by hour,
Each leaf and blossom good.

Daily the blossoms sweeter grew,
More shapely in their growth,
While kept the leaves the tender hue
And softness of their youth.

You were like sister, in a land
Where sisters I had none,
To whom I told whate'er I planned,
And shewed whate'er I'd done.

222

While neighbours never spoke we word
We fain had spoken not,
And nought between us e'er occurred
Which we should wish forgot.

And then we left the dear old place,
I in fresh lands to roam,
And you with travel to efface
The loss of your old home.

Once more a few brief weeks we spent
In the familiar town,
But not in the old way which lent
To every hour its crown.

For cares we could not obviate
Kept us too far apart,
Although they varied not the state
Of friendly heart to heart.

223

We parted once again to roam,
Whither we scarce had planned,
Until we found—myself at home,
You in my native land.

We met, not as we parted last,
But as we first had met,
As if two absent years had passed
Just for us to forget.

We met with no distracting care
To pilfer precious hours,
And reinstalled the friendship rare
Which in old days was ours.

And then I saw the stately growth
Of your full womanhood,
Still with the tenderness of youth,
As with spring leaves, endued,

224

And with rich blossoms of the mind,
And blossoms of the soul,
In hue and scent and shape refined,
Harmonious with the whole.

Ungracious words you never spoke,
Or did once graceless act,
Nor pet illusion ever broke
For want of woman's tact.

Fair women were my idols e'er;
Sweet maids have I known well,
But never one, where soul more fair,
In fairer shape did dwell.

White soul the Roman bard would call
The spirit in your breast,
And this expression—all in all
Portrays its pureness best.

225

As years roll on, we two shall roam
O'er many a sea and land,
But I shall always feel it home
Where I can hold your hand.

226

A TALE OF TWO COLLEGES.

[An Echo from Cheltenham.]

She'd big, brave eyes of tender blue,
The maiden at “The Ladies' College,”
And wavy hair of some soft hue,
The maiden at “The Ladies' College,”
A mouth for love and laughter meet,
A voice for song and soothing sweet,
Her very trip was exquisite,
The maiden at “The Ladies' College.”

This maiden oft I chanced to see,
In days when I was at “The College,”
And yet I swear was nought to me,
In days when I was at “The College.”
Eyes were but eyes, however blue,
Hair simple hair, whate'er the hue,
If she were fair I hardly knew
In days when I was at “The College.”

227

I wooed a coy “Eleven Cap,”
In days when I was at “The College,”
Won my “twin C's” mid hack and rap,
In days when I was at “The College.”
I dreamed of class-room victories,
Of “coming through the scrimmages,”
Of “driving fours” and “cutting threes,”
In days when I was at “The College.”

Nous avons changé... years ago—
It may be ten—I left “The College,”
And other dreams more brightly glow
Than boy-dreams, born when at “The College.”
I care as much for “cutting threes,”
I like to look at “scrimmages,”
But I would give the world to please
That maiden at “The Ladies' College.”

The badge of the Cheltenham College Cricket Eleven.

The badge of the Cheltenham College Football Fifteen.

228

SYMPATHY.

Deny you that your body ails?
Oh then it is your mind that pales:
If Sickness darkens not your eye,
Her foster-sister, Grief, is by.

A gentle woman not a weak,
No trifle blenches your brave cheek;
A Spartan of the Christian strain,
Despise you only your own pain.

I cannot share your pain or woe,
Until its source you'd have me know;
Nor may I, what I feel, express
Till lips as well as looks confess.

229

But you have read my sympathies
In the mute message of my eyes,
Although you knew not that your pains
Awoke in me the kindred strains.

230

SEASONS.

His Spring! The hedge, which ran beside
His father's cottage-door, was gay—
He was a village boy, bright-eyed—
With snowy blossoms of the May.

His Summer! Round his bungalow
The plantain with the palm would vie—
He was a famous soldier now—
In tropic grace and greenery.

His Autumn! Was it not their Spring?
The Wattle's golden wealth of bloom—
The strong man now was mellowing—
Was brought by children to his room.

231

His Winter! The old hero stood
Once more beside the boughs of May:
And snow there was upon the wood,
But then the blossoms were away.

232

THE TWO SPIRITS.

[Or, Optimist and Pessimist.]

Two spirits, one of Hope and one of Care,
Flew 'neath the self-same roof;
One's garment was of black and chill night air,
The other's of sun-woof.

One brought the warmth and light into the room
Upon the bleakest days;
The other threw a shade of chill and gloom
Athwart the sun's own rays.

The spirits, she of Care and he of Hope,
Loved one another well,
Although no reader of the horoscope
Dared such a love foretell.

233

They clung but did not blend: the robe of dun
Upon the back of Care
Could not be patch-worked with the woven sun,
Which he of Hope must wear.

Now it was night; and then the star of pain
The joyous sun outshone:
Now it was day; and in the light again
The evil star had gone.

In some soft twilight in the latter days
May this strange pair be dight,
Without the dazzle of the sun-robe's rays,
Nor yet as dark as night.

234

THE HOUR OF PRAYER.

Whenever the Poet heard the hour
Chimed from the neighbouring belfry tower,
He bowed his head to pray.
Held he that some mysterious power
In words then uttered they?

Or was it this that the striking chime
Reminded him of the flight of time,
And life that ebbed away,
Or church bells ringing at matin-prime,
And noon and close of day?

He did remember some legend old,
In which were mystical virtues told
Of pray'r at chime of hour,
And thought how swiftly life's current rolled,
When spoke each antique tower.

235

And hearing hours from the belfry chime
Reminded him of the olden time,
When pious mass was sung
And bell for pray'r at each day's prime
And noon and close was rung.

Not often the Poet knelt to pray
In churches during the Sabbath day,
But while he heard the chime
Peal from the belfry, he turned alway
And gave to God the time.

Whether it was that the striking chime
Reminded him of the flight of time,
And life that ebbed away,
Or church bells ringing at matin-prime,
And noon and close of day.

236

A LEGEND OF THE SABBATH.

There is a legend old, which says
That God comes down on Sabbath days
A little nearer earth,
And posts His angels in the ways
To gather deeds of worth.

It did mayhap originate
In some old preacher's pious pate,
His people to induce
One day a week to consecrate
Unto religious use.

For, thinking God was nearer earth
And angels' questing deeds of worth,
They sanctified this day
Alike from labour and from mirth
To do good deeds and pray.

237

The legend may be true or no;
Good men believed it long ago,
And profited thereby,
If once a week they acted so
As if their God was nigh.

We live in an enlightened age
And war on superstition wage,
And yet no better do
Than those who hearing this adage
Believed it to be true.

238

THE LOST POEM.

December 31st 1884.

It was the death-night of the year;
The night was frost-begemmed and clear;
The Poet in his study sate,
And cried, “Upon this magic night
A glittering poem will I write
To make my name for ever great.”

The Poet in his study sate
Prepared to woo his Genius late
And watch the crowding thoughts appear,
While, echoing through the frosty air,
In clear voice should the chimes declare
The dying moments of the year.

239

He watched the crowding thoughts appear,
And looked forth on the dying year,
And saw the moon illume the trees;
The stars were vigilant on high,
A low wind from the sea did sigh,
And bells were borne upon the breeze.

He saw the moon illume the trees,
And heard the murmur of the seas;
Already seemed his Genius by;
The nearer silence, distant bells,
Clear frost and starry sentinels
All waked the soul of Poesy.

Already seemed his Genius by,
When Beauty with her pleading eye
Soft-stealing to the Poet's side,
Sat on a footstool at his feet,
As richly, confidently sweet
As though she were his wedded bride.

240

Soft-stealing to the Poet's side,
She wistfully his glances eyed,
Her face transfigured by the fire,
Her clear cheek spirit-touched, her hair
Shot-sungold in its flickering glare,
Her mien instinct with sweet desire.

Her face, transfigured by the fire,
Was raised to deprecate his ire;
Her hands upon his knee she clasped,
And looked at him as if to say,
“Be gracious to me if you may,
Love's fetters on these hands are hasped.”

Her hands upon his knee she clasped,
And in her thrall his soul she grasped;
A moment was there struggle keen,
Between the shapes that crowded round,
Waiting with language to be crowned,
And her—the crowned by Beauty queen.

241

A moment was there struggle keen,
Then the shapes vanished, for his queen
Opened her lips—'twas but to kiss—
The ring upon her fair hand set,
As love-knot, keep-sake, amulet
When she had promised to be his.

Opened her lips—'twas but to kiss—
When, taking both her hands in his,
He rose beside her, with his eyes
Deep-fathoming the liquid blue,
To sound the sweet soul whence he drew
Love in mute eloquent replies.

He rose beside her, with his eyes
Afire with love and sweet surprise,
But with the hauntive look, which told
The seer of shapes beyond the ken
Of unitiated men,
Already from his visage rolled,

242

But with the hauntive look, which told
That he could mysteries unfold,
Replaced by that ecstatic gaze,
Which says that fear nor fire nor death
Will move him, while he draws his breath,
From the rapt worship, which he pays.

243

PATRIOTIC POEMS.

A LETTER FROM GORDON.

[Dated Sept. 9th 1884—quoted in the Despatch from Lord Wolseley to Sir E. Baring, dated Nov. 29th 1884.]

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.

265

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS.

PERICLES.

He gave its title to the golden prime
Of Athens, called the Age of Pericles;
He left a name for arts of war and peace
Scarce-rivalled in two thousand years of time;
But not for this doth he illumine rhyme
Above all heroes of historic Greece;
But that when power might pall or cares might cease,
He lived in love as sunny as his clime.
Surely he was of all men happiest,
The greatest of his country and his age,
And privileged to pillow on the breast
Of that most famous of Eve's family,
Whose name is writ upon Romance's page,
Aspasia of ambrosial memory.

266

MARGARET OF SCOTLAND.

There's magic in the name of Margaret,
The sweetest sound in Scotland, though the two
Best-worshipped Margarets she ever knew
Were English: one is saint of Scotland yet.
The other we pourtray with lashes wet
For him her countrymen at Flodden slew,
And found, his mail arust with autumn dew,
'Mid bishop, earl, and doughty banneret
Upon the morrow-morning. Yet for me
The name wakes not the Scots' kings' English queens
Widowed by English arrows, but the glee,
Blue eyes, and glittering hair and proud sweet miens
Of two of Scotland's daughters—born afar
From Tweed or Aln—'neath the southern star.

267

PLATONIC LOVE.

I.

I have not read what Plato writ of love,
But love Platonic is it not like this,
To feel thyself with all enough of bliss
If thou canst with the one companion rove,
No matter where—alone in cool alcove
Or in a crowded room—to choose to miss
A warm caress from beauty, a rich kiss
From passion's daughter rather than remove
From this one's side, to have no care but hers,
No joy complete till she has shared it too,
To be the fondest of her worshippers,
But never think or speak of love or do
Other than brother fond of brother might,
Whom tastes as well as kindred veins unite?

268

II.

I have a friend—of love we never speak,—
Love in the human meaning of the word,—
Not that our pulses are not gaily stirred
Whene'er we meet, not that we do not seek
Our company from end to end of week,
And when we part feel like the Eastern bird,
Of which old ornithologists averred
That when its mate was lost it turned its beak
Into its breast. Presence is paradise,
And absence exile—light-of-hearts like we
Know not a hell. A pearl beyond a price
Is it for us to roam beside the sea,
Or on the free moors all a summer day,
With care and every human face away.

269

III.

And now, sweet friend! thou wilt be here again,
There never was a maiden whom I loved,
Whose coming back to me so strangely moved
My being as thou movest it. We twain
Are matched so deftly in our mind's domain:
In all the divers places, where we roved,
The same sights caught our fancy, and we proved
Our perfect sympathy, when we were fain
Night after night within one room to sit,
As busily we worked, though scarce we spoke
Or raised an eye, but at our note-books writ,
Till “Twelve” with its “to-bed” the stillness broke.
When two in silence can together spend
Delicious evenings, each has won a friend.

270

WIFE-LOVE.

I.

That woman should endure the pain of pains
For any man, should spend the weary weeks
Weighed down, half crippled, lie with hollowed cheeks,
And wounded long days more, ere she attains
The power for most ordinary strains
Of household life,—that she is willing speaks
For her devotion, more than he, who seeks
In annals of a hundred heroines, gains,
That one in all the pride and health of youth
Should court a bed of sickness, chance of death,
And weeks of pain, declares the noble truth
Of woman's love and courage, as the breath
Of all the bards who ever sang her praise
Could not, declaiming till the end of days.

271

II.

Consider her returned to health once more,
The bright, defiant hoyden of old times,
Who would not list to love—no not in rhymes—
And trampled victims cruelly, who wore
Her beauty as a burden, since it bore
Its train of courtship. See how love sublimes,
And suffering softens! How each comer climbs
Straight to her heart, with no more cunning lore
Than kissing baby cheeks, or calling smiles
To baby lips, or dwelling on the growth
And promise of the loveliness which wiles
All eyes towards its mother. Wise in troth
Was old Anacreon, when as babe he drew
The Love-God who his shelterer overthrew.

272

INFANCY.

When we recall the myriad accidents
Which babe-life threaten, marvel is it great
That they have ever come to man's estate,
Who won great wars or carved out continents!
Napoleon, for all his regiments,
Was once a little helpless child, whose fate
Lay balanced in his nurse's love and hate:
A chill at Cromwell's birth had changed events,
As Rupert could not, and his cavaliers,
In half-a-dozen battles. When we think
How surfeit or starvation, heat or cold,
Neglect, unwary diet—not for years
But hours—will sweep the infant o'er the brink,
The marvel is that any man grows old.

273

ON A DEAD INFANT.

Dead that two brothers should not disagree!
Poor babe! Thy brief experience of earth
Knew little of its beauty and its worth,
But yet thou didst fulfil a destiny,
In that thou wouldst not come 'twixt him and me.
Ten weeks of wintry weather from thy birth,
And then thou soaredst where there is no dearth
Of sun and southern air and sympathy.
O may no cloud, though smaller than a hand,
Arise again between us, lest once more
God should from us some sacrifice demand
Like this, which thus untimely we deplore.
We are amenable to Providence
Although we understand not in what sense.

274

BOB.

[Written on an Infant's Grave in the Torquay Cemetery.]

This was the child of hope: about his birth
Fair portents shone, recorded that they might,
When he had won his name, be brought to light,
And men might read the promise of his worth
In all that heralded his dawn on Earth,
And from his cradle fame begin to write.
But after a brief sojourn took he flight
Before he knew so much as grief or mirth.
High hopes are buried underneath this stone,
Where lies a child begotten overseas,
Who never breathed in that serener zone
Where, even in the winter, cooling breeze
Is welcome to the joyous folk who fare
Free and contented in the sunny air.

275

TOO LATE.

Whom has it not befallen at a ball
That some shy maid, he did not note till late
And briefly danced with, should by some ill fate
Be she who most attracted him of all:
And so in friendships will it oft befall:
Some one for weeks has been your constant mate,
In day-walks and night-talks inseparate,
In all you minded, sympathetical,
And yet the closing link of sympathy
To make the two ends of your bond to meet
Your vigilance has cheated, till well nigh
Your intercourse's season has passed by;
And then you see how passingly more sweet
This intercourse had been, if thus complete.

276

CATHEDRALS.

I.

You, our Cathedral who would view aright,
Think not you saw it in the hurried look,
Which, waiting for a train, perchance you took,
Or in one day devoted to the sight.
There is a something of the infinite
In Gothic minsters caught, which will not brook
A dilettanti visit; every nook
Is rich with some religion recondite;
Pillar and groin and corbel and keystone
Are eloquent. The architect may be,
Testing each course and column one by one,
Some glimmer of the mystery may see,
Or the grey dean, whose life for many a year
As chanter, curate, canon, hath been here.

277

II.

Choose you to know our minster as they do?
Go dwell beneath the shadow of its walls,
Seek it at matins, and when even falls,
And, while the flood of music thrills it through
From porch to lady-chapel, fondly view
The old-world carving on the canons' stalls,
Where favoured thou mayst sit, or finials
Upon some baron's tomb, and note the hue
Which glass took in the third King Henry's reign,
The delicacy of the tracery
Which held it in the windows, and rich stain
And symbolism spent in days gone by
Upon the rood-screen, and then, wondering, glance,
Over the nave's vast pillars and expanse!

278

III.

So mayst thou learn, when many a chaunted psalm
Hath risen from thy lips, and many a time
Knee hast thou bowed beneath the roof sublime,
To know the stones not only, but the calm
And mystic atmosphere which yields the charm
In places, where pray'r hath not ceased to climb
Up heaven's altar-steps, and bells to chime
Summons of joy or worship or alarm
For twenty generations. Only those
Who spend their lifetime on it know a thing:
Who lives outside at best can say he knows
“Of it” not “it,” for all his studying:
But “knowing of” not “knowledge” must suffice
For men in daily labour's iron vice.

279

EXETER CATHEDRAL.

Not greatest of our minsters is the fane
Of Exeter, but dear it is to me
As the first fresh one, which I chanced to see
(Though I had been to Westminster again
And huge St Paul's) since I recrossed the main,
From the New England in the Southern Sea,
Where ancient minsters are not. Royally
it rises up, with tracery, rich pane
And sculptured niches glorious its west,
And Norman towers its centre, and its east
Inside with antique tomb of knight and priest,
Rood-screen and bishop's throne. And by me stands
She whom I think of many maids the best,
A pilgrim, like myself, from Austral lands.

280

COCKINGTON LANES,

near Torquay.

Rare afternoon in an October rare!
We passed red cliffs environing blue seas,
Red lanes with green banks bounded and elm trees;
The sky was clouded lightly; soft the air
And fresh and soft the breezes; the rich glare
Of red and green was almost Cinghalese,
Recalling for the traveller reveries
Of red-tiled roofs and palm-tree groves, so fair
To unaccustomed eyes; but soon the green
Of elms with linden-yellow, hawthorn-red,
And marvellous horse-chestnut-orange sheen
Was tempered, and once more 'twas mine to tread
The merry, crackling leaves—a sound scarce known
In ever-green Australia's milder zone.

281

A WALK IN SPRING.

[From Torquay to Marldon.]

Spring's many voices—cawing of the rooks,
Bleating of lambs, the blackbird's clucking note,
The echo from the teamster's sturdy throat,
The babble of the rain-replenished brooks.

Spring's cheerful sights—the flowers in their nooks
In wood and bank, the fields in their new coat
Of fresh-ploughed red, the squirrel perched remote,
The student lured by sunshine from his books.

Such hear I, such I see the day I go
Across the hills to Marldon, snowdrops here
To light the eye, and on each fresh-ploughed row
A parliament of rooks to greet the ear,
Until the turning road before me flings,
The grey old Church gay in five hundred springs.

282

DEVONSHIRE.

Broad county of deep hedge-rows and blown trees,
With wild deer ranging on thine eastern heights,
And salmon in thy spates, and rich in bights
And wooded estuaries and pebbled quays,
Elbowed against the western storms and seas!
Great mother of Elizabethan Knights,
Who fought in frozen seas and famous fights,
And bearing in thy quaint-named villages
The impress of the Norman, as thou bearest
The emblem of the Briton on thy moors!
Nor is this all thou boastest but the fairest
Of mead and orchard, yielding oft-sung stores
Of cream and cider—for thy wealth with fame
As great as for wild beauty and high name.

283

BOWOOD.

[Near “Bideford in Devon.”]

A white farm-house on Daddon hill's bluff crest,
In true Devonian-wise environed round
With deep-sunk lanes all honey-suckle-crowned,
Walled in securely from the blusterous west,
Whose wrath the trees, blown arbour-shape, confessed,
Thou, with some ever-echoing homely sound
Of cattle byre or barnyard, horse or hound,
My soothing refuge wer't for thought or rest
One cloudless August through. At sunset's hour
A furlong from thy gateway, I could hear
The wild wood-pigeon coo, and see the tower
Of Abbotsham between the elm-tops peer,
And, if the even were not overcast,
Rough Lundy scarred with western wave and blast.

284

II.

Oft have I paused a moment at thy gate
To watch the sun its seething scarlet steep
In sea, and myriad rooks fly home to sleep,
As I returned from pilgrimages late,
From where King Hubba met with his red fate
By men of Devon, or some ruined keep
On Cornish headland threatening the deep,
Or little haven, now of low estate,
But whence, in days of great Elizabeth,
The Grenvilles, Drakes and Raleighs issued forth
In the swift gnats of ships, which stung to death
The Spanish monsters, when they came in wrath
To scourge with stake and sword the little realm
That dared to doubt their power to overwhelm.

285

TOR STEPS

—A BRITISH BRIDGE NEAR EXMOOR.

Tor Steps,—a relic of the ancient race
Who ruled the land, a causeway of vast stones
Built in the days of men with giants' bones
And heroes' might,—thou standest in thy place
After Time's storms have conquered to efface
The Celt's and Saxon's, Dane's and Norman's thrones.
Who knows if thou hast heard not ringing tones
From Arthur, glowing with an Exmoor chace,
Or rooting out some robber-prince, who made
His fastness in the savage moorland combes,
Or maybe with a gentle cavalcade
Of ladies in rich silks from ancient looms?
The bridge stands: the brown river ripples on:
But errant-knight and tourney-queen have gone.

286

THE HERB-ROBERT.

[Written Close to Ilsham Farm, Torquay, in Winter.]

Herb-Robert, wherefore Robin of the flowers?
Because thou art their Red-breast, red in leaves
And blossoms, when the latest of the sheaves
Have long been garnered and ere April showers
Have filled the womb of May and she embowers
All Nature. Not the glow on summer eves,
Just ere the sea the setting sun receives,
Can shame the crimson, which in autumn hours
Flows through thy fronds, and thy wee pink-tinged bloom,
Amid the darkness of November days,
Serves with its small light to dispel the gloom—
Its small light hardly noticed mid the blaze
Of huge bright summer-blossoms—as sick room
Is cheered by humble folk with kindly ways.

287

THE BEECH TREE.

[Written after a drive from Berry Pomeroy to Torquay, in Autumn.]

Give me of all our English trees the beeches,
Upright, smooth stemmed, and shapely in their spread
Of leafy boughs, in summer raimented
In glossy green and, when November preaches
His warning to the failing year in speeches
Of gust and frost, so gloriously red
That all the hollows where the leaves lie dead,
Rival the glow of crimson on the peaches
In hothouse reared. Not for fair stem and leaves
We praise thee only! have we not, when boys,
Declared thy nuts superior to the joys
Of walnuts fenced securely? Have not eves
Of chilly Christmases mid London fogs
Been transformated by thy blazing logs?

288

THE SONNET'S SCANTY PLOT.

I.

What are the sonnet's province? Not conceits
On trivial themes from classic fable brought,
And tricked in phrases studiously sought
From Spenser and, his brother bee-hive, Keats,
But portraits of the spectacle which meets
The poet's eye, when such a fight is fought
Or such a glimpse of such a glory caught
Or when some tale of fire his fury heats.
Sonnets should seize the floating thought or sight
And fix it like the graphic plate which takes
The impress of the image in the light
And, with long pains developed after, makes
The features or the landscape, which it scanned
In Nature's breadth, yet truth of detail, stand.

289

II.

And therefore Wordsworth's sonnets do we love,
Wholesome and hearty, simple and direct;
He strove not after mystical effect,
Nor divers hues in patchwork interwove,
Which rival not the plumage of the dove,
So perfect in its prism, but the specked
And garish clothes which savages select
When the trade-schooner runs into a cove
Of coral isles. He tells us what he felt—
A simple man with open sympathy—
Seeing the morning haze from London melt,
Or gazing on the glorious tracery
Of “King's,” or sitting by his cottage fire.
A king himself for satisfied desire.

290

OXFORD, THE GRAND UNDOER.

I.

Oxford, the Grand Undoer, thou dost cost
More than thou yieldest those who tread thy stones,
Not unforgetful of the men, whose bones
Have lain long ages in their bodies' dust
But who were once the glory and the trust
Of college, then of country—more than once
Of country first,—if then, as at the nonce,
The man, who academic honours lost,
Was laying the foundations of a name
More lasting than a roll of scholarships,
A fellowship, and medals—or the fame,
Which halos a great teacher of the hour,
To undergo perpetual eclipse
Upon the rise of some new teaching power.

291

II.

Oxford, the Grand Undoer, thou undoest
The men, who in their ordinary sphere
Might have made many a hundred pounds a year
As merchants, lawyers, doctors, whom thou wooest
To this of true æsthetic lives the truest—
The quest of knowledge free from any care
If golden fruit or not this knowledge bear—
These, when to true disciples thou subduest,
Thou takest from their own broad, beaten path
To wander in the pleasaunces, where they
Cull neither first-fruits nor the after-math,
But only wander with an aimless pleasure,
Losing at every hour and turn their way,
And finding nought of the too-scanty treasure.

292

III

Oxford, the Grand Undoer! he, on whom
Thou layest the enchantment of thy rule,
Can never settle to an office-stool
But with the feeling of a living tomb,
Or give his thoughts and industry in gloom
Of London courts to ledger work, or school
His mind, attuned to antique cloisters cool
In Oxford, to a hot and whirring room,
With vast machines and hands-in-hundreds filled.
He has lived the life of Oxford and can ne'er
The fairy castles in his brain unbuild;
And, though 'mid looms and ledgers he may sit,
His heart and fancy never will be there
But to the country of his castles flit.

293

IV.

Oxford, the Grand Undoer—whom indeed
Undost thou not? The giants of their kind,
The men who have such mastery of mind
That the world stops to listen or to read
Their pregnant words, of pregnant work the seed.
In ordinary callings of mankind
Such men would waste their powers, would not find
The where-withal of food their minds to feed.
These Oxford calls from following their sheep
To intellectual thrones. By her not found
Their mighty intellects would eat, drink, sleep,
And die within their sheep-folds, and the world
Would know not of the royal heads uncrowned
The oriflammes of genius unfurled.

294

V.

Oxford is not a school for little men,
But training ground, where men of giant mould
May the full powers of their frames unfold,
At best a lottery where few may gain
Aught but the paltriest prizes, or attain
To heights where they may strike a bee-line bold
Unto the goal, which in their minds they hold.
The rest must linger in the thick-scrubbed plain
Where, if they leave the common beaten track,
They lose themselves—too lucky if they can
Win by supremest efforts their way back.
Oxford is but a school for drudge and king.
For him no king, and yet no common man,
She hath but little in her hand to bring.

295

ADDENDA.

THE DEDICATION OF “A SUMMER CHRISTMAS.”

To Mrs George Cawston.]

To You, with whom I wandered oft,
Ere overseas swift ship I took,
Where Ingleborough looms aloft
Or in a Surrey orchard-nook,
To You I dedicate this book.
For Wattle, though I sang not Oak,
And Austral creek not English brook,
Yet English hearts love English folk.

296

To You beneath whose roof so oft,
Ere overseas swift ship I took,
Upon the ball-room skirmish soft
'Twixt brave and fair 'twas mine to look,
To You I dedicate this book.
Though later southern beauty woke
Chords which my deepest heartstrings shook,
Yet English hearts love English folk.

To You the friend to whom so oft,
Ere overseas swift ship I took,
Heroes I sang on hills aloft
And wooers in a woodland nook,
To You I dedicate this book.
Though myths of stranger lands I spoke
And for strange lands my own forsook,
Yet English hearts love English folk.

297

Envoy.

To You I dedicate this book,
And Wattle though I sang not Oak
And Austral creek not English brook,
Yet English hearts love English folk.

298

THE STARRY SISTERS.

Glorious is that which dazzles from afar,
And mystery enthralls. Astronomy,
Can she with her poetic sister vie,
Who read by patient watching of a star
Not size and distance only but the war
Of fortunes good and evil? Do we buy,
With knowledge which will brook no augury,
A recompense for thirst men had of yore
In drinking from their futures? Jupiter
Retains his borrowed brightness, Mars his hue
Of soldier-red, but vanished from our view
The Horoscope and grey astrologer,
Though from the discrowned science great men drew
High inspiration in the days that were.

299

FORSTER'S “MIDAS.”

Finished, in the rough only, on the day that the Author the Hon. Wm. Forster, sometime Premier of New South Wales, died.

Finished the task, but then the writer's term
Was finished with it. Feebly had his hand
Writ the last words when to the shadowy land
He passed across, not with old age infirm
But having long within him borne the germ
Of sudden death. For else he would have scanned
Each line and word most critically, banned
Each loose idea, awkward phrase, ill form.
But, Reader, hold it sacred what he writ,
For hardly dry the writing when he died,
And therefore not he only uttered it
But death within him. Words thus sanctified
'Twere sacrilege to alter or omit;
As death hath ordered, so it should abide.

300

TO SIR SAMUEL WILSON,

of Hughenden Manor, Bucks, and Ercildoune, Australia.

Often by hostile critics carped at erst
You have lived down their censure. Now you stand
Known through the length and breadth of this great land
As one who toils for England's greatness first
Nor place and profit afterward, who durst,
When patriot hopes were low and hearts were fanned
By slander's breath to fury, join the band,
Of constant men that braved the wild outburst
Of wrath and hate by fickle millions hurled.
Yours is the steady purpose which has won
History's giants their glory in the world:
You proved its fibre 'neath a fiercer sun,
Where Melbourne's hall attests how well your will
Tamed Austral wilds with wealth your hands to fill.

The Wilson Hall in the Melbourne University, the gift of Sir Samuel, is the finest building in Melbourne.

301

TO J. HENNIKER HEATON, Esq.

An enterprising and successful colonist of New South Wales, and a munificent contributor to the Patriotic Fund, with which she is supporting her contingent to the seat of war.

Smiling, stout England sees her sons go forth
To seek their fortunes o'er the southern main:
It proves them worthy of the ancient strain
Which sallied out to conquer from the North.
And loves she, when they've well displayed their worth,
To hold them to her bosom once again,
Where, if their hearts beat high, they would remain
Rather than in the softest air of earth.
And Kent is proud of him who hewed his way
In the new land so swiftly, who doth yet,
Though his heart bids him in the old land stay,
The home of his adoption not forget,
But strains his purse to make her burden light
While she sends sons in England's ranks to fight.

302

PRIMROSE DAY.

'Twas only the pale little Primrose,
The pride of a glade in the wood;
Men gathered the blossom in April
In the sweet of its primrosehood;
'Twas pale and its fragrance was faint,
But 'twas free as the snowfall from taint.

'Twas only the pale little Primrose,
Not the pride of the hothouse, they chose,
When under the blossoms of April
The patriot passed to repose;
'Twas humble, but all loved it well,
And took it their feelings to tell.

303

And England now treasures the Primrose,
As she treasures not even her Rose;
'Tis the emblem of National Honour,
Of Peace, without cringing to foes;
Thus even the wild flowers of spring
Their praise to the patriot bring.

304

WAR.

What meaneth the hum of the dockyards, the knightly old music of steel?
What meaneth the hum of the city, the tramp of the well-timed heel?
What meaneth the banner of England from the stern of the mail-ship swung?
What meaneth the note of defiance with the voice of a people flung?
War.

We hide not the sorrows of warfare, the widow, the want, and the woe;
We hide not the perils of warfare, the might of a resolute foe;
But our eyes are beginning to glitter as our fathers' flashed ages ago,
When our Edwards went forth to their battles with the men of the bill and the bow.