English Roses :: :: University of Virginia Library

Trust in God,
Trust in God
In the way your fathers trod,
When they gave the foeman point,
Blood and steel,
Though a world was out of joint—
Till at heel;
Though against a hostile earth
And beneath a frowning sky,
In the teeth of doom and dearth;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God,
If with justice ye are shod
Marching on through shot and shell,
Blood and steel,
In the fiery jaws of hell—
Till at heel;
If around you all the lands
Like the powers of darkness try
All their worst, with armed hands;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God,
Though the thrones about you nod;

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And, while dynasties go down,
Blood and steel
Cast their shadow on the Crown—
Till at heel;
Though the peoples foam and fret
Or destroy and know not why,
And the suns in sorrow set;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God,
If you feel His heavy rod
And His chastening on you falls,
Blood and steel;
Face the foe with iron walls—
Till at heel;
If the rulers from their path
Stray and hold the helm awry,
While on them descends the wrath;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God,
Though all crimson be the clod
And yet thinner the red line,
Blood and steel,
And the toils of evil twine—
Till at heel;
Ye were born the conquering race,
And the shadow soon will fly
From your proud imperial place;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God,
If on rugged ways ye plod;
Heaven will yet defend the right,
Blood and steel,

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And preserve you through the night—
Till at heel;
For ye fight His battles still
And He is your one ally,
He will pay the cruel bill;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God,
Though you often break the sod
For your comrades in the fray,
Blood and steel,
In the dying and decay—
Till at heel;
Ye must lead the nations on
With your freedom's victor cry,
Ere old slaveries are gone;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God,
If the issues yet are odd
And ye sometimes feel the fire,
Blood and steel,
As ye stumble through dead mire—
Till at heel;
For ye bear the Holy Ark,
And for liberties ye ply
All your efforts, though in dark;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God
For the fruit within the pod,
For the triumph won by pain,
Blood and steel,
Broken life and bitter chain—
Till at heel;

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Yours the might, the master hand
When the prentice work goes by,
Yours the habit of command;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

Trust in God,
Trust in God
With the bayonet or hod,
With the trowel or with arms,
Blood and steel,
When at peace or in alarms—
Till at heel;
Yours the Book, the living Faith,
Wheresoe'er ye build or buy,
Not befooled by Glory's wraith;
Only keep your powder dry,
Powder dry.

“DOWN WITH THE PEERS!”

If England wants a battle fought and won,
She sends a lord and then it's nobly done;
Noblesse oblige goes down from sire to son.
“Down with the Peers!” (Applause and cheers).

If England wants a helpful word in need,
Some lord will nobly utter the right creed;
Noblesse oblige is good for word as deed.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a treaty that will stand,
She asks a lord and then it's nobly plann'd;
Noblesse oblige is more than a command.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a bulwark of the State,
Some lord alone will nobly keep the gate;
Noblesse oblige walks with him as his fate.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

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If England wants to light dead altar fires,
Some lord will nobly grant her heart's desires;
Noblesse oblige to Heaven like flame aspires.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a debt of honour paid,
Some lord is nobly foremost with his aid;
Noblesse oblige a law is on him laid.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a charter like the rock,
Some lord will nobly bear the shade and shock;
Noblesse oblige did never fear the block.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a champion of the poor,
Some lord steps nobly from his palace door;
Noblesse oblige will scrub the cottage floor.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a saviour she can trust,
Some lord will nobly lift her from the dust;
Noblesse oblige serves just because it must.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a scape-goat for her loss,
Some lord will nobly ride the waves that toss;
Noblesse oblige has borne the hardest cross.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a teacher, guardian, guide,
Some lord is nobly waiting at her side;
Noblesse oblige heeds neither wind nor tide.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants a model she may give,
Some lord will nobly show us how to live;
Noblesse oblige is his prerogative.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

If England wants the last sad broken tie,
Some lord is nobly resolute to die;
Noblesse oblige can never, never lie.
“Down with the Peers!” etc.

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If England wants a memory of fame,
Some lord will nobly write it in his name;
Noblesse oblige is without fear and blame.
“Down with the Peers!” (Applause and cheers.)

GOD OF OUR FATHERS.

God of our fathers, and this land
On which Thy mandate falls
To do the working of Thy hand,
With liberties as walls;
May honour be the glory still
And bulwark of our State,
To buttress us through good and ill,
While justice is its gate.
O bid our men and women be,
Who breathe this larger air,
With thy own blessing brave and free
And from thy beauty fair.

God of our fathers, we have grown
To greatness at thy side,
From bitter seeds by martyrs sown
On every coast and tide;
We moulded are by fires of Ind
And storm and frozen flood,
The passion of the wild sea-wind
Makes music in our blood;
The boundlessness of rolling space,
The majesty of skies,
They march with each imperial pace
And kindle in our eyes.

God of our fathers, we are yet
The champions of the right,
And earthly suns can never set
On those who carry light;
We have no purpose but Thy plan
Which broadens with the age,

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And gives to re-arisen man
The hope his heritage;
We only fight Thy battles, Lord,
The one appointed way,
And we are nothing but Thy sword
To bring the brighter day.

God of our fathers, lead us on
The pathway we have been,
Till the dark weary strife is gone
And earth again is green;
We are Thy servants, and the tools
That shape the shadowed lands,
Through scorching flames and iron schools,
At length to Thy commands;
But when the truth that cannot die
Makes all men's living sweet,
Let us with the foundations lie
As dust beneath Thy feet.

A BATTLE SONG.

Here's a song for the Nor'land,
For the greenfield and foreland,
For the wild wind and all;
If the old world wax older,
March with shoulder to shoulder
And with rifle and ball.

Here's a song for the redcoat,
For the living and dead coat
In our woe and our weal;
If the bold world wax bolder,
Fight with shoulder to shoulder
And with bullet and steel.

Here's a song for the seaman,
For the faithful and free man,
In the times out of joint;
If the cold world wax colder,
Stand with shoulder to shoulder
And with parry and point.

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PRO PATRIA.

Englishmen, where'er ye be
Always brave and always free,
Bearing into heathen night
Liberty's transforming light
And its charters, writ in martyrs'
Blood that sealed the sacred right;
Carrying with you as a sword
Of enfranchisement the Word,
Fighting as your father's trod
In the battles of their God;
Fooled by factions, can ye be
Still a nation brave and free?

Englishmen restrained and strong,
Foremost against every wrong,
Fencing round your path with awe
Of a reverend iron law
Built as solemn court and column,
Without fear and without flaw;
Breathing as your life the air
Of a justice large and fair,
Showered alike on foe and friend,
To one predetermined end;
Loyal to no duty long,
Are ye still restrained and strong?

Englishmen, erect and true
Dealing to each man his due,
Holding honour as a shield
Proved on many a flood and field;
Who in slaughter shed as water
Blood before ye fly or yield,
Known on every sea and land
By your habit of command,
And the proud imperial grace
Poured as sunrise on your face;
Signing pacts your sons will rue,
Are ye still erect and true?

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Englishmen supreme and sure,
Buttressed by a faith secure,
Ramparted with walls of fame
Never touched by shade of shame,
And the story of a glory
Down the centuries the same;
Earnest, and one people yet
With the Book or bayonet,
Simple as a child that prays
Though with kingly conquering ways;
Bought by any trickster's lure,
Are ye still supreme and sure?

WHAT MAKES ENGLAND?

What makes England, marching greatly through all history to be,
Terrible and strong and stately in her progress bright and free?
Tell me, pages of the ages, where upon heroic stages
Beautiful in sun or mists,
Stand in glory and the story grandly chronicled and gory
Deathless our protagonists;
What makes England first of nations crowned by universal will,
Leading on the generations to horizons fairer still?

Not her bars or breasts of iron, wooden wall or fence of steel,
Bulwarks which unmoved environ her when lesser kingdoms reel;
Not the bearing and the daring of her energy unsparing
Sped across new seas and lands,
Onward leaping, ever heaping harvests for the gallant reaping
Of her bold imperial hands;
Not her redcoats or the seamen shaped and shaken by the storm
And the battle, into freemen of the true heroic form.

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Not the commerce and the Argos blown by every wave and wind,
With her pioneers and cargoes from the Occident to Ind;
Not the coffers cheap to scoffers till they want the wealth she offers
To the countries in their need,
Goods and treasure without measure bringing with them peace and pleasure
And their civilising seed;
Not her merchandise and trading sons, who put a golden girth
Round all peoples, yet invading every market of the earth.

Not her justice like a banner sheltering the high or low
Not her calm and equal manner proved alike by friend and foe;
Not the sweetness and the meetness of her infinite completeness
For the reason or the right,
And the honour laid upon her by the Great who died to don her
Majesty and royal right;
Not her credit like a jewel beautiful and vast and fair,
Shining brightest in the cruel habitations of despair.

Not her liberties and charters won on many a field and flood
By her heroes and the martyrs sealing them with sacred blood;
Not the broader breath of order curbing still the wild marauder
In the rugged Afghan pass,
And that vision of decision with the sword that in derision
Holds the fiercest creed or class;
Not the freedom in the faces of her champions, as they press
On their outposts into spaces still an unmapped wilderness.

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What makes England proud and peerless, buttressed by eternal rocks,
Resolute and first and fearless, still against a world of shocks?
'Tis the surer step and purer love that builds up life securer
Of the women whom she bears,
Wives and mothers more than others whom the curse of custom smothers
With the chains no Briton wears;—
These her safeguards and her splendour, with a faith a fortress dome
Under God the one Defender, ramparting her island home.

GOD DEFEND THE RIGHT.

Where Roman eagle never flew
The flag of England flies,
The herald of great empires new
Beneath yet larger skies;
Upon a hundred lands and seas,
And over ransomed slaves
Who poured to her no idle pleas,
The pledge of Freedom waves;
Whatever man may well have done
We did with dauntless might,
So England holds what England won
And God defends the right.

Where hardly climb the mountain goats,
On stormy cape and crag,
A refuge to the wanderer floats
Our hospitable flag;
If alien banners only mock
With glory's fleeting wraith,
It stands on the eternal rock
A fortress of our faith;

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Wherever steps her gallant son
The powers of ill take flight,
So England holds what England won
And God defends the right.

When wrongs cry out for brave redress
Our justice does not lag,
And as the seal of righteousness
Unfurls our stainless flag;
The helpless see it proudly shine
And hail a sheltering robe,
It beacons on the thin red line
That girdles round the globe;
A pioneer of truth as none
Before it scatters light,
So England holds what England won
And God defends the right.

Beneath the shadow of its peace
Though riddled to a rag,
The down-trod nations gain release
Beneath our blood-tried flag;
Ours are the battles of the Lord,
And never will we yield
A foot we measured with the sword—
Save for a burial-field;
And we will not retreat, while one
Stout heart remains to fight;
Let England hold what England won,
And God defend the right.

FOR THE UNION.

Stand up for Queen and country, stand
For Holy Church and swear
To guard the honour of the land,
The heritage we bear;
Through broadening ages handed down
From noble sire to son,
The brightest jewel in the crown,
And for all nations won;

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Gained on red field and tossing flood
And by the poet's pen,
Built up of iron deeds and blood
With golden lives of men.

Stand up for union and the tie
Which married sea and earth,
And with the love that cannot die
Brought liberty to birth;
Our history is one, our fame
Flows from a common spring,
Our perils ever were the same
When swords began to ring;
Together have we fronted need
To prove our friendship then,
And sown the world with precious seed—
The golden lives of men.

Stand up for justice and the truth
Which with its beacon light
Gives those that ask eternal youth
And buttresses the right;
Which metes to each a measure fair
And for no favour bends,
But universal as the air
With our own being blends;
Which with the music of its chime
Illumes the darkest den,
And leaves as charters for all time
The golden lives of men.

Stand up for empire, and the trust
To set the kingdoms free,
Because we have the might and must
And own our God's decree;
That we may carry peace and law
Along our blessed way,
The shadow of our England's awe,
Which brighter is than day;
While we prepare with righteous will
A higher creed and ken,

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Who grudge not (if we conquer ill)
The golden lives of men.

INVICTA.

Rode a war-ship strong and stately, on the subject sea;
As a master steps sedately through his verdant lea,
And at leisure in his pleasure
Hears his servants' plea;
Over unmapt and unstreeted realms and roads as yet ungreeted,
Roofed by heaven's grey dome,
Making mid the waters wild as their freeborn chosen child
Everywhere her home;
Crossing tossing leagues of surf, as about his native turf
Sports a country boy,
Taking toll of wind and weather yoked with service true together
In her iron joy;
Castled on the conquered surges fawning at her feet,
Broken by the metal scourges to a homage meet;
On the bridled bitted brine, seated by a right divine.

Terrible and clothed in thunder down the waves she went,
Ploughing those green hills asunder, awful, imminent;
Black and bearing death, and wearing
England's might unspent.
In her glory proud and peerless, bent on prey, and fast and fearless
Bringing judgment doom;
Swung her pennant loose and wide to the tributary tide
Gaily in the gloom.
Churning, spurning foam and froth flung as flowers on bridal troth,
Forth she moved like fate,
Threshing on in lonely wrath her inevitable path,
Grim, predestinate.

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Every piston stroke appointed heaved her giant form,
Swashed her swirling sides anointed by the crashing storm;
Married to the ocean, yet as a slave beneath her set.

Rose her bulwarks with the billow in its measured sweep,
Calmly as upon a pillow rests a Queen in sleep,
With unswerving course preserving
Tenure of the deep.
Those gaunt throats that in mute hunger gaped, and soon ere day was younger
Would o'erfill their maw,
Smiled in peace and meek pretence, though with armèd insolence
Stern as Sinai's law.
Singing, stinging dashed the spray through the halyards and made play
On each wrinkled seam,
While the dreadful ship in scorn seemed enchanted and upborne
In an iron dream.
Scooping up the angry water silently she sped,
In her lurid lust of slaughter direful as the dead;
And the boding skies bent down, gathered to one ghastly frown.

Fore and aft they cleared for action, all from truck to keel
Fit and in the smallest fraction burnished, stock or steel;
Ripe and ready, stout and steady
For the battle reel.
While, with lightning's livid omen, circling round her now the foemen
Drew a ring of fire,
Tall and trembling for the fray, as if spirits lost had sway
For their damned desire;
Hasting, tasting full the bliss of the souls in the Abyss,
Gallant ships a score

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Hurling out their shot and shell fierce from mouths like flaming hell
On a cursèd shore.
Wood and metal flew in shivers from each armoured hem,
And the blood ran down in rivers right from stern to stem;
O'er the red dim sanded deck, streamed the price of every wreck.

Scuttled half and half now shattered was the hostile fleet,
While the Invicta bruised and battered still was death to meet;
Lightly rolling, as one strolling
Down his village street.
Ere a man could say his credo rushed the ruining torpedo
Or the ram went home,
Blotting out with strangled cry each adventurous enemy
Like some finished tome.
Swearing, tearing screeched the bolt with a rending and revolt
On its settled prey,
And with dirges dark leapt out bane from every snorting snout
In that smother grey;
As they belched and spat and sputtered fate and fury round,
And with tempest music fluttered wretches not yet drowned;
Each blank nozzle reaped its own, in the harvest it had sown.

There in blighted bulks and blasted heaps her victims lay,
All dismantled and dismasted round the boar at bay,
While like vernal floods infernal
Hail did never stay;

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Shrieking shrapnel and the growling guns and hubbub of the howling
Wind that chanted still,
Made a tumult like the fall of an universe and all
Pandemonium's will.
Ashes, flashes, light and cloud, wove the shadow of a shroud
On that solemn stage,
As she mingled earth and sky in one utter agony
With her iron rage.
Bursting boiler, crimson scupper wrote with funeral pen,
And the sharks had sanguine supper on the meat of men;
Ah, with blood of mangled flesh, billows salt waxed sweet and fresh.

Yet with colours fair and flying the Invicta rode
Fierce among the dead and dying in her sad abode,
While in acres seething breakers
Beat a burial ode.
Adversaries scathed and scattered and with leaden splashes spattered
Grovelled at her side,
As she breasted wind and wave and of ocean dug a grave
In her passion's pride.
Riddled, fiddled on by doom floundered through the glare and gloom
Bloated bulks of ships,
Mutilated now and smashed helplessly as eggshells, lashed
By her murderous lips;
All the fiends appeared in surly tumult to have flocked,
Mixed in maddening hurly burly nevermore unlocked;
And the shouts of hopes and fears, sounded as from distant years.

Engines of destruction stuttered messages of woes,
Hurtling on the heavy-shuttered and enshielded foes,
And the rattle of the battle

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Brake through earthquake throes.
Crippled tools that scarce would stammer hate, machines that yet did hammer
Wrack and rapine's roar,
Mingled as if sworn and set Babel had with Bedlam met
In that curtain hoar.
Crashing, mashing metal ribs easily as baby cribs
Poured the shell and shot,
Splintering and peeling fast all that faced the mortal blast
Hissing-ripe and hot.
Butting down and blindly blurring every new advance,
While her funnels still kept purring to the devil's dance,
Lone, with lightning sheathed and shod, the great ship in triumph trod.

In a threatening sky of scarlet set the ghostly sun,
And beneath a curtain starlit by the stabbing gun
Ever pounding and confounding
More that chaos dun,
Shapes like shadows crossed with motion sinister and in devotion
Terrible and true,
Worked the many-mouthing ire in the furnace of the fire,
Though their lives were due;
Gliding, guiding with a thin thread of glory dusk and din,
As they looked and leant
Forth into that turmoil wild so defiling and defil'd
And for evil meant;
Scribbled here, it seemed, and spotted on the canvas red,
Each one at his post alloted kept his gory bed;
If with tortured gesture, some fought the sentence that would come.

Suddenly the hostile clamour died away and bowed
Hardly to the vengeful glamour of that shining shroud,

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Where with riving shocks and striving
Flashed the thunder cloud.
Figures grimed and pinched and pallid for a moment rose and rallied
Through the reek and smoke,
Struggled with despairing cry in their dreadful destiny
And unbending broke;
Haggard, laggard faces dim thrust athwart confusion grim
Gasped with stertorous breath,
And with writhing reckless hands cast their curses and demands
At that iron death.
Till at last, when all were scattered by her conquering storm,
Cheering, flag on high if tattered, sank the fateful form—
When no foe remained to kill—to the end Invicta still.

A NATIONAL HYMN.

O God, our shelter and our shield,
Beneath the burning dome
Of tropic skies, on flood and field,
And everywhere our home!
Bless Thou the Queen Thy goodness gave,
And guard the country's power
O'er rocky coast and surging wave—
The world that is its dower.
Thine are our charters true and tried,
The liberties and creeds
For which our fathers lived and died,
Old England's title deeds.

Be Thou the fortress of our faith
That it may brighter bloom,
Above the passing petty wraith,
Of glory and its doom.
And may our Church for ever stand
A witness to Thy name,

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The bulwark of this ancient land,
The buttress of its fame.
Our Empire's sun can never set
If thou remain our pride,
The Bible and the bayonet
Fight onward side by side.

Bless Thou the State, and order still
Its rulers' high intent,
That they may work Thy righteous will
In goodly government.
And thus may freedom be our crown
In every age and clime,
And honour yet send its renown
A beacon through all time.
Let justice in our pathway shine
And gild the darkest dearth,
And clothe with thunder the red line
That girdles round the earth.

Make Thou the Queen a corner stone
For Thy own Temple meet,
And frame her universal throne
The footstool of Thy feet.
And only where Thy light has led
May she hear duty's calls,
And by our love be ramparted
More than by ironclad walls.
And bless her with Thy wisdom true
Which lesser teachings feign,
That she may render each his due
And for her people reign.

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK.

We are the people of the Book,
The chosen of the Lord,
We but to Him for guidance look
And are His conquering sword.
We are the one imperial race,
We have the ruling hand,

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Our freedom grants the foremost place
And lightens every land.
For we were made to govern earth
On many a field and flood,
To give the world a grander birth
Baptized with iron and blood.

And we were meant to fashion all,
We have the fairest right—
The heart that leaps at duty's call,
The mandate that is might.
The blue sea is our royal robe,
On every shore we stand,
And carry with us round the globe,
The custom of command.
Our navies bear the lamp of law,
The blessings that environ
Our realm with justice and its awe,
Secured by blood and iron.

We are the people of the Book,
The chosen of the Lord,
And never will old England brook
Resistance to His sword.
We plough in hope the barren space,
We plant the gospel yet,
And if the heathen know not Grace
We give the bayonet.
The world is our imperial road,
We ride upon the flood,
We lift ourselves the nations' load
And build of iron and blood.

A FIGHTING SONG.

Straighter yet! Close up!
If this evening we sup
With the conquerors, as is our wont;
Or are feasting instead,
With the glorious dead
And our fathers who went to the Front.

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Stiffen still the red rank
On the rear and the flank,
As if England all stood in each station;
With the bullet and point,
Smash their line out of joint—
Give them hell and cold steel and damnation!

We've a battle to fight
For our country and right,
And they have but a battle to lose;
For we only go in
As the soldiers who win,
And the beaten must pay and not choose.
If we get in a rut,
The reserve is the butt,
And our blows are as stalwart as steady;
If you want to know why,
It's the powder kept dry,
With the cause and the men who are ready.

UP WITH THE BAYONET.

Up with the bayonet, down with the pen!
Bullets are flying,
Heroes are dying;
War is the school for the making of men.
Who will be master?
Doom and disaster
Fashion the spirit, victorious then.

Stiffen the line with a backbone of steel,
Bind in one tether
Grimly together
Purpose and powder, till enemies reel.
Comrades keep falling
Round us, and calling
Loud for revenge and our conquering heel.

Down with the tape-measure, up with the sword!
England is striving,

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Red with the riving
Blades all unsheathed in the name of the Lord.
Wounds of our brothers,
Weeping from mothers
Widowed unite in an adamant cord.

Who thinks of turning his back against odds
Cruel and crushing,
Here in the rushing
Rage of the battle and cause that is God's?
We are His pointed
Spears and anointed
Tools, and His judgement's imperial rods?

Up with the rifle, and down with the spade!
Digging is over,
Fields like the clover
Blossom in blood and a funeral shade.
Life waxes cheaper
Now, and the reaper
Comes with the sickle—the harvest is made.

Honour compels us, and glory is dear
Bringing us laurels
Bright, out of quarrels
Fought for the Right without resting or fear.
Ours is a station
Strong like the nation
Nerved as one man, when the triumph is near.

Down with the goosequill, and up with the game
Gallant and bitter
Sport, and yet fitter
Food for a people whose hearts are in flame!
Give us the slaughter
Flowing like water,
But not a cowardly quiet and shame.

MARCHING ORDERS.

We were off the Lord knew whither
And the Lord alone knew why,

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As if spite had sped us thither
Under some infernal sky;
And as Dick said to McTavit,
“Multa tulit et sudavit
Puer,” thanks to destiny—
Always dealing toil and trouble
To our boys, with measure double,
And in close vicinity!
But the Hill men's ugly legion
Had been harrying the region
Which we watered with our blood,
And the losses made our bosses
With their precedents and glosses
Talk of turning back the flood.
And a scientific frontier
For which all red tapists pine,
Was the dream of Lord Dupontier—
Just to rectify the line!
For we had our marching orders,
And had gaily tumbled out
From our camp, to cross the Borders
And to worry things about.

For the Viceroy at head quarters
Was a very fiend for fuss,
With his marketable daughters
Who all favoured the old cuss;
And possessed of one idea
As a patent panacea
Which he ventilated thus;
With his passion for defining
Bounds, that needed re-assigning—
While the burden fell on us!
By a rough and wrong provision
He had reached the right decision
We were spoiling for hard blows,
And worked better if the fetter
Of our drilling to the letter
Once relaxed its dreary shows;
And when raiders lit the candle

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Which he so desired to prove,
They afforded a fit handle
To a fine strategic move.
For we had our marching orders
Though misgivings bothered some,
Where to cut the blooming Borders
On our route to Kingdom Come.

Things looked lively, boot and saddle
Were the business of the day,
Though the boys had long to paddle
Up a steep and dusty way;
With machine-like swing and tramping
And the horses' eager stamping,
As they sniffed afar the fray;
And the harness with its jingle
Made our torpid senses tingle,
And resent the least delay.
We seemed sportsmen after partridge,
Though not loaded with blank cartridge
And without superfluous weight;
For the jesting was unresting,
And it carried no suggesting
Of a sterner fun and freight.
But a rifle now would rattle
And a sabre then would glint,
While the vulture scented battle
And the jackal knew its print.
For we had our marching orders
And were glad enough to go,
If before we cleared the Borders
There was hell to hammer through.

Here an old campaigner's bottle
Peeped from its concealing mesh,
There a gun with iron throttle
Rubbed its nose on harder flesh;
And the youngsters, full of fighting
To the muzzle with delighting,
Were demanding foes to thresh;
And the old and stirring story,

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Waxing every day more gory
Now was trotted out afresh.
What were heat and thirst and thunder,
If the baking earth was under
And not over flagging feet?
Yes, rude faces caught new graces
And in spite of endless paces,
With an enemy to meet;
For that took from toil the bitter
And made hours of anguish fly,
While it lent a gallant glitter
To the keen expectant eye.
For we had our marching orders
And were mad, each mother's son,
To be first across the Borders,
With good service to be done.

Then the scouts came in with tidings
Drawing tenser every arm,
As we (not without self-chidings)
Rose responsive to the charm;
From the forehead slipt the shadow
Like a cloud that leaves the meadow,
At the thought of hostile harm;
While the stooping shoulder heightened
And the gaze of langour lightened,
With the music of alarm.
If the wind blew south or norward,
Yet it bare us ever forward
To the feasting of the strife;
And wild fancies gave us chances
Of renown and all romances,
Which alone were leaping life.
So our belts were buckled tighter,
At the prospect of a game,
And the dullest brow turned brighter
When it caught the battle flame.
For we had our marching orders
And retreat was deadly sin,
We would soon be past the Borders
And were ready to romp in.

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IN ACTION.

Into action we went laughing there and then
Full of fighting, full of cursing
Which we had so long been nursing,
Just a thousand strong all told and proper men.
Balls were humming, cannon strumming;
And true hearts to battle drumming;
As we marched to meet them in the slaughter pen,
While a hell of iron nozzles howled Amen.
Salt and seasoned lads were we
Eager only to unmask that armèd puzzle,
Ripe for mischief and the worst damnation spree,
Loaded likewise to the muzzle.

Out of action we came hungry at the last
Full of cursing, full of fighting
And hard blows that were delighting,
Not a hundred strong all told by muster past;
Though as lumber, beyond number
Slept their deep unwaking slumber
Enemies, who would not break to-morrow's fast—
While of us not one escaped the leaden blast.
Weary frames and sternly tried
We had faced the fire and buffets late and early,
But if worn and torn remained unsatisfied—
Ready for the hurly-burly.

But in action we were like one moving wall,
Linked and living steel that harried
Ruined ranks and grimly carried
In its conquering progress man and steel and all,
Down and under, with the thunder
And the bolts that burst asunder
Square and squadron toppled in the same red fall—
Battered, shattered out of hope of their recall.
For we never dreamed of flight,
And each hand however rude that took the shilling
Yet was clothed in awful armour of the Right,
And for either fortune willing.

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But we did return in triumph with the tread
Of Deliverers, fit for action
Still, with here and there a fraction
Left of butchered limb and trunk and mangled head;
Having written on the smitten
Foes our law of justice, bitten
Sharply by the sword in dying breasts and dead,
And for liberty a path of glory spread.
For the Empire was our care,
Laid upon us with the charge that makes man bolder;
And its honour each of us upbare,
Bravely, on his single shoulder.

AN OBJECT LESSON.

“Hang it,” said the General, “it haunted,
Sir, and plagued my blessed life for years
With a waking nightmare, though I vaunted
I was not by man or spectre daunted,
And as free as any one from fears;
Even now when shadows lay
Ghostly hands on dying day,
Sometimes yet the horror re-appears
With curst features like no creature's
Driving all my peace away;
And I see, arising from the dead,
That old vision of the bloody head.”

“Well,” proceeded he, “I had a crony
In the Guards, a twentieth cousin too
Big of heart and frame, a match for Bony
In strategic plans, a stout Malony
And engaged to Lady— God knows who!
Just the counterpart of me,
Brothers could not more agree;
And a devil quite to dare or do
Feast or scrimmage, to the image
Of some mad Corroboree.
Side by side we daily romped and wrought
Mirth or mischief, and together fought.

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“Then came Arabi, and we discarded,
Loo for Waterloo or work like that;
And the Fellahs had to be belarded
With their own sweet gravy, and bombarded
To submission and an old cocked hat;
And we two were drafted out
Gaily, and despite the gout,
On this cure for our superfluous fat;
And each other blooming bother
We had shared, with every clout.
Till at length dark Tel-el-Kebir came,
And the midnight march and wall of flame.

“Tim was heaping curses like a glutton's
On our Wolseley, who let Gordon die—
Just to maunder of his private muttons,
Or economise in straps and buttons—
Glossing all with the official lie;
Both of us were leading then
Gladly on our eager men,
Bound by courage in one living tie.
We were waiting, for the baiting
Of the badger, in his iron den;
And we drew him finely forth, though some
Soon passed in their checks to Kingdom Come.

“Many a gallant comrade then was stricken
Down and lost the number of his mess,
Or got there the curse that made him sicken—
Aye, and now it bids my pulses quicken,
Just to tell once more that stormy stress;
When we chased the vermin fast
From their hiding holes aghast,
Leaving vultures damage to assess.
Red as clover, when was over
Night, the reaping of that passion past;
Friend and foe lay jostled stiff and stark,
Equal now and sealed with one pale mark.

“Tim was foremost, in that pack of parrots
Shrieking oaths and hatred and blue funk,

147

Laughing, thrusting, saving lives like Marrot's
And (he shouted fiercly), ‘Slicing carrots,’
Sober yet demented as if drunk;
Cheering, guiding on his best
With the jabbing sword and jest
Men inspired with no less hardy spunk.
Till a volley, in his folly
Spat its last nor spared that hero breast;
And one ball, mid that dire damnèd rain,
Shore the body and the head atwain.”

Now the General just paused and lighted
Sadly a cheroot and smoked, and sware
Thoughtfully with zest, as if that righted
Nerve and balance for a bit benighted,
Or relieved him of a crushing care;
And continued—“Then the clock
Brought the shadow and the shock
Round again of what that fight we bare;
And the minute, we were in it,
Struck my heart as with a judgment knock;
While we dined and drank, one silent spell,
To the friends who in that battle fell.

“Lo!”—and here his words grew calm and colder
And he wiped his forehead of the sweat,
Looking for the time a decade older
With a furtive glance across his shoulder
And a movement half a thrust or threat—
“Suddenly, unlike the dead
Rose and rolled a bloody head
Down the board where we survivors met;
Grim and gory, with their story
In his eyes that turned upon us read;
Big with fun and headlong fury still,
Ready yet to strike once more and kill.

“Thrice”—he added, and his brow maligned him
When he mumbled the old fear had fled
And it was but gout that so inclined him,
As he cast a cautious peep behind him—

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“Thrice that ghastly face which grinned and bled,
Unawares upon us burst
Like an unlaid thing accurst—
All the horror of that Bloody Head;
Down the table rolled unstable,
Daring us to do what no man durst;
When we would recall our grievous blanks,
And the comrades fallen from the ranks.

So we stocked (what you would call) the bursary
Next year with each dainty we could store,
Catching too a Bishop on a cursory
Tour and booked him for the anniversary
Which we meant to honour as before.
And his blessing proved too long
Or the piety too strong
For our Tim, and he appeared no more.
Benediction our affliction
Cured, and the Right Reverend gave a comic song;
For, though Tim was first at danger's side,
Prayer was what he never could abide.”

A BLOOMING ADMIRAL.

Old Conningtower was seasoned salt,
By many a breeze and ruder pal
And kinsmen now in their cold vault,
Into a blooming Admiral;
For bulldog-like he kept his troth,
And liked a good mouth-filling oath
Red-hot and neatly rounded;
He loved a glass and pretty lass,
And was by nought confounded.
The breath, as wine, of tossing brine
Gave him its breadth and motion—
With duty and devotion.

A ship-shape customer was he
At every fight or festival,

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Wrought by the music of the sea
Into a blooming Admiral.
He had a tender ear for wrongs,
And hands like hammers and the tongs
That struck and did not fumble;
And manly strife to him was life,
However rough and tumble.
He held by Church, even when his lurch
Was not exactly steady;
But he was always ready.

He tussled hard with every foe,
Assisting at their funeral
And saw them safely down below—
As should a blooming Admiral;
While he, though pounded ill and oft,
Still only higher went aloft
And got more way for steerage,
Or shook out sail for fresh avail,
Till anchored in the Peerage.
He handled craft well fore and aft
But hated cries of faction,
And blessed the call to action.

His purse was open to each friend,
He brooked no insult to a gal;
The manners it were hard to mend,
In such a blooming Admiral.
He feared no enemy or blast
And nailed his colours to the mast,
When comrades tried to scuttle;
And his an eye for history,
Like stout old Captain Cuttle.
And when, in short, he entered Port
A hulk not now so limber,
He smelled of tar and timber.

SONG OF THE FLAG.

Heads all uncover,
Gentlemen, stand;

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Peasant or peer, but yet loyal and lover
Of the old land!
Bow to the Country and bow to the Queen,
Bow to the symbol of all that has been
Lovely and living,
And is yet giving
Peace to the world with its terrible sheen.
Lo, it is waving on coast and on crag
Far, and the might of its shadow is light—
Honour the Flag.

Hands all uplifted,
Gentlemen, swear
Still the old Colours though storm-tossed and rifted
Bravely to bear!
Rampart the Church and the State as ye must
Strongly and truly, remember the trust
Carried down ages'
Beautiful stages,
Handed to you to keep sacred from rust.
Courage may falter and confidence lag,
But should the price be supreme sacrifice
Honour the Flag.

Hearts all united,
Gentlemen, weld
Spirit and act in one troth ever-plighted,
Purposed of eld!
Rally around the one beacon of fires
Kindled long back at the fountain of sires'
Valorous doings,
Virtuous wooings
Robed in the thunder and God-like desires.
Onward it goes, sometimes rent to a rag,
Emblem of Right if through bloodshed and might—
Honour the Flag.

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HOW WE STORMED THE BATTERY AND REGAINED THE GUNS.

(TO ALL WHO WEAR AND LOVE THE RED TUNIC.)

It was Tommy and I, and we took it
And a precious warm place;
But we deemed it disgrace
Guns were captured, and we could not brook it—
No such damnable wrongs!
We saluted the Colonel, and lightly,
Sallied out, with our belts buckled tightly,
Trim for hammer and tongs.
We desired a good thing and a racket
And a row with some dust on the jacket,
With the pudding served hot
And a tumble and tussle,
For the best bone and muscle—
And my comrades, you bet, this we got.
For, you see, we had merely done nothing,
We were sick of just putting on clothing
And then putting it off,
Though it looked deucèd smart,
And the waiting till seasons grew riper;
Should the enemy scoff,
At our lacking of heart?
We were ready, and would pay the piper,
And were spoiling for fun and the fray—
So away!

We had plenty of redcoats to follow,
Of the hardiest kind—
Not one laggard behind,
Who could beat thrice their company hollow
And were hungry to go;
Just the safe sort for fighting or revels
Tough and true, stiff as steel and dare-devils,
Saucy hands at a blow.
We had more for the work than we needed,
It was hard for such grit to be weeded
When brave fellows were fain,

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With a chance for some glory
And pro patria mori—
To be silent of commoner gain.
When we peeled our superfluous matter,
Not a sound of cheap frivolous chatter;
We gave messages too
And our treasures in trust,
For dear kinsfolks and friends and the ladies;
We had business to do,
And as Englishmen must—
If their road is as dark as to Hades.
It was honour, though death, not defeat
Or retreat.

I must own my remembrance is hazy,
As to each small event;
We were jolly content
To advance, if the foes thought us crazy—
And they holding our guns!
We would strike at their blooming battalions,
And knock over some scores of rapscallions—
Mischief take him who runs!
We felt shamed by that infamous capture,
And were burning with hope and the rapture
Of regaining the loss;
Though this poor Adam's image,
In the scramble and scrimmage
Shed a bit of its beauty and gloss.
I confess I did think of my mother
With a catch in the throat, and another
Who was worthy a sob;
Though she shied after all,
Like a foolish and unbroken filly,
And then married “White Bob!”
Bolting, Sir, at a ball;
He was richer, no doubt, but half silly.
And it lighted me forth, and afar—
Dick's cigar.

I recall my dead chum, who was smoking
An uncommon nice weed,

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As he wished us God speed!
And we parted at length with grave joking,
I and grim sober Dick.
He was touched with the fever and achey,
And though eager enough far too shakey;
But he was rather sick,
Just to miss what he wanted, adventures,
And to write with red sword their indentures
On a nigger or two;
At the point and the parry,
He could fence with old Harry
And the winner would be—I know who.
But the grip of his honest brown fingers,
Were a part of the pleasure that lingers—
They seem warming me now;
And his earnest gray eyes
Looked in mine with a gaze past expression
From a puckering brow,
As in sorry surmise—
But he did not waste words of profession.
And that perfume had carried me well,
Into hell.

'Twas an hour ere the dawn when we started
And yet blacker than pitch,
With a thundering ditch
To be crossed—but we all were whole-hearted,
And quite equal to that—
Yes, as strong as they make them, a dozen—
We would conquer them somehow, or cozen
The defenders thereat.
And prepared for the roughest of shindies
That had ever been known in the Indies,
We crept quietly on
Through the murk and the mazes,
While our blood leapt like blazes
For the terrible calm to be gone.
Thank the Lord, by good luck we got over,
But to find ourselves still not in clover,
Slogging hard, give and take,

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Bayonet and the ball;
Though for them we were just a bit early,
They were now wide awake
And as bitter as gall,
When we closed in the mad hurly-burly.
And I prayed, the first time, nothing loath—
With an oath.

We were death on those guns, sir, and willing
For the ugliest strife—
No one recked about life,
It was only the wild lust of killing;
Not a quaver had room,
We were loaded right up to the muzzle
And to get in more shot were a puzzle,
While our meaning was doom.
I got grazed once or twice, but felt little,
And I knew nigger's bones were but brittle
As I taught them to spin;
It was like cutting carrots,
And they screeched as their parrots
When my sword in the gravy slipt in.
So we drove the scared sheep in a huddle,
Ankle deep now in many a puddle
Which looked ghastly and red,
In the dull morning light;
Till they made their last desperate rally,
And behind on my head
Fell a blow, and rushed night.
But sheer cusseduess won in that sally,
And my skull always was (though so scarr'd)
Jolly hard.

LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!—1897.

England hails thee
With a thousand thousand voices,
Walling round the world in love;
Nothing fails thee
Of our homage which rejoices,

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We can reverence thee above.
Lo, the passion of one plaudit
Like the trump of the last Audit.
Leaps obedient to thy hand;
Crowning sweetly
Yet again, and crowning meetly
Our First Lady of the Land.

England holds thee
Very dear as wife and mother,
Walking like great Queens of Eld;
Honour folds thee,
As it never did another
Though by fondest flattery swelled.
Thine the glory to have journeyed
Long with us and by us tourneyed,
But with never stain or brand;
Gently bearing
Our worst griefs and gladly sharing,
Spotless Lady of the Land.

England owns thee
As her righteous ruler proudly,
Who hast lived the longest reign;
Love enthrones thee
In our hearts and praises loudly,
With a pleasure none do feign.
See, from farthest moor and mountain
Flows the tribute as a fountain,
Come the gifts with common band;
Thus conspiring
To acclaim with truth untiring
Thee, our Lady of the Land.

England takes thee
Now unto her bosom nearer,
Ramparting thee strongly round;
England makes thee
Many times our Queen and dearer,
In her loyalty's new bound.
Yet once more art thou anointed

156

With our prayers, and re-appointed
To a realm by justice planned;
Thou through ages
Shalt adorn our brightest pages,
Chosen Lady of the Land.

GOD OF BATTLES.

O God of battles, be our guide,
The captain of the hosts
That wrestle with each tossing tide
And rampart round these coasts.
Be Thou our first and last Defence
In passing crowds and cries,
Amid the pomps of vain pretence
Wherein no refuge lies.
And mould us if by suffering schools
The vassals of Thy voice,
To be in all things ready tools
More worthy of Thy choice.

Thou art the Light wherein we live,
Who govern but for Thee;
It is Thy greatness, that doth give
These borders fair and free.
And buttressed by Thy guardian care
We walk our stately road,
Uplifting as we ever bare
The kingdoms' heavy load.
Let nothing evil shame or shake
One least foundation stone,
And with Thy presence awful make
The shadow of the throne.

We are Thy chosen servants yet
In daring and in deed,
Though by the darkest ills beset
To carry on Thy creed.
For while we wield the simple trust
That answers to Thy call,

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Shaped with Thy beauty brave and just,
If faint we cannot fall.
We have no other stay than Thine,
Through evil hours of wrath;
O, in Thy power, arise and shine
Yet more upon our path!

Our walls of iron are but a wraith
And strengthless ranks of steel,
Without the bulwarks of our faith
And hearts that humbly kneel.
But Thou, whose edicts loose and bind
The nations at Thy will,
Art in all Majesty behind
Our prayers the Ruler still.
So shield from every breath of harms
The people of Thy hand,
Clothe with Thy thunder England's arms
To conquer and command.

QUO DEINDE RUIS?

Ho, the sword! that sharpens for the fray
And the marching of the men
Ready to arise from prayer to slay,
At the scratching of a pen!
Europe one great armèd camp,
Echoes with the dreadful tramp
Of the millions in their gaudy coats
Ripe for flying at each others' throats.
Ho, the marching of the men,
Who to the same God of mercy call
And prepare for murder one and all,
At the scratching of a pen!

Christ of Peace and Love, our common Lord,
Unto whom alike we bend,
With this ghastly gospel of the sword
What abyss shall be the end?

Ho, the guns that clamour for the fray,

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The eclipse of blood and fire,
Grim as devils' own black holiday,
At a word upon a wire!
Europe, with each death machine,
Is one powder magazine,
Waiting for the nod and tiny flash
Just to make the world almighty smash.
Ho, eclipse of blood and fire
Shadowed in the future's awful arch,
As the multitudes destroying march
At a word upon a wire!

Christ of Peace and Love our common Lord,
Unto whom alike we bend,
With this ghastly gospel of the sword
What abyss shall be the end?

Ho, the myriads of mourners, draped
In the garmenting of gloom
For the thousands who have not escaped,
And the orphans and their doom!
Europe with its veilèd brow,
Is one cemetery now;
And the widows from their haunted sleep
Only wake, to curse their loss and weep.
Ho, the garmenting of gloom
For a babbler or a party whim
And the empty loves for ever dim,
And the orphans and their doom!

Christ of Peace and Love our common Lord,
Unto whom alike we bend,
With this ghastly gospel of the sword
What abyss shall be the end?

WHERE IS OLD ENGLAND?

Where is the old ascendence,
Which as a giant drew
In dauntless independence
The bow of bitter yew?

159

Where are the iron feet that stood
For England on her walls of wood
In one unbroken brotherhood,
And fought and overthrew?
Back to the breast that suckled
Our never-beaten sires,
Who with base spirit truckled
Not to the fiercest fires.

Where is the old endurance,
Which carried safe to port
The ship with stout assurance,
And counted striving sport?
Where are the iron arms of yore,
That in their English quivers bore
The lives of twenty men and more,
And bled at Agincourt?
Back to the mighty mother,
That bred and fostered all;
And fly the fumes, that smother
The empire to its fall.

Where is the old defiance,
That crumbled thrones as clods;
And, with a great reliance,
Faced overwhelming odds?
Where are the iron acts, that broke
Their chains with charters and awoke
To conscious power and by it spoke,
And knew the battle God's?
Back to the breezy fountains,
And not the city den;
Back to the moors and mountains,
That made our English men.

Where is the old aggression,
Which wantoned in the strife,
The glorious indiscretion
Uncareful of the life?
Where are the iron hearts, that fed
On goodly deeds as daily bread,

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Or chose the hardest field for bed
And kissed the altar knife?
Back to the streams and meadows,
The furrow's fertile track;
And freedom, through the shadows,
Shall bring our England back.

BLOOD BROTHERHOOD.

One in the common rights of race,
One by the heritage of law,
We both look upward in God's face
And feel a kindred awe.
One in a thousand common ties
Which arm us with an equal power,
We draw the same grand liberties
And from no different dower.
We twain were fashioned in the fire
And dandled on the stormy flood,
Uplifted by one brave desire
In brotherhood of blood.

One in the love so largely spent
For justice and its broader creed,
We fought for the enfranchisement
Of others in their need.
One in our nobleness of claims
We never wrought for greed alone,
And in the light of lofty aims
For errors did atone.
We brake no bond or alien sod
But to impose a harder band,
And brought the charters of our God
Unto the darkest land.

One in our proud imperial breath,
One by the service of the sword,
We squander life and laugh at death
And own no earthly lord.
One in our passion for the truth

161

Whereto through weal and woe we cling,
We daily yet renew our youth
At the same upper spring.
For freedom only do we strike
And seldom need to strike again,
Who suffer of our choice alike
What destinies ordain.

One in the glory of intent
Which struggles surely to the light,
We ask for no arbitrament
But the eternal right.
One in the majesty of hope
Which dares whatever mortal can,
And will not heed a lesser scope
Than the whole cosmic plan.
So must we work together still,
Yoke fellows and united friends,
In chivalries of good and ill,
As kin for common ends.

CURSE OF COMPULSION.

We English born of gallant sires
Who lived for liberty and fought,
And wrung their charters from the fires
Where they themselves were grander wrought,
We who have breathed a purer air
And drunk in strength from deeper springs,
To build this empire far and fair,
Will brook no idle tamperings.
Heap on us burdens at your will,
O rulers of a day or night,
And batten on our plenty still—
But do not touch our ancient right.

We English have a rugged way,
Of acts that speak with thunder voice;
And as the potter moulds his clay,
We break the creatures of our choice.

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Sometimes we kick at bars and laws
And shatter things to primal shade,
When tides that carry States as straws
Engulf the idols they have made.
Spare not the taxes which we rue,
And grind our faces in the dust;
But trifle not with freedom's due,
Or touch our old and honoured trust.

We English love the sacred tome,
Wherein each deed of title lies;
We bear no stranger in the home,
Nor meddling with our liberties.
Force has a hateful sound to hearts
That never stooped to foreign foe,
And choose to play the nobler parts,
Whate'er the sacrifice or woe.
We are the children of the free,
And guard the fortress of the truth;
O let the tried foundations be,
Nor touch the bulwarks of our youth.

We English without favour do
The upright thing, like sire and son;
And hold our persons precious too,
Surrendered at the call of none.
We deem these charters are our own,
Gained by the service of the sword—
Through blood and tears to greatness grown,
And fear no Master but the Lord.
We grudge not treasure or our toil,
Ye rulers of a moment stage;
But, if our very lives be spoil,
Touch not the solemn heritage.

THE YOUNG PRINCE.

23rd June, 1094.

O Heir of England's greatness and the power
Which justice metes the land,

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By others vainly striven for but the dower
Held in thy baby hand,
God-moulded to command,
An empire leans on thee as on a tower;
Thou last and least, yet grandest of possessors
Enriched by every age,
Begin thy splendid stage,
Which opes a seat among thy dread assessors,
Armed with that awe the terror of transgressors,
Thy hope and heritage.

Born to a freedom which is sadly sought
By myriads, but thy right
Upon the anvil of the centuries wrought
Red-hot to tempered might,
And the calm orbèd light
Of equal law by blood and iron bought;
We cannot give thy brows a brighter glory
Than this, long handed down,
Buttressed by sword and gown,
And wrung as charter from the arena gory,
Where heroes fought and statesmen made the story,
To be our England's crown.

To thee we tender as a solemn trust
Our old unsullied fame,
The shield that never may take spot or rust,
To mingle with thy name,
And still abide the same—
Deathless, though kingdoms fall and thrones be dust.
Take it, and guard our honour as a jewel
To shine in darkest needs,
The bulwark of our creeds,
If trials fall and fortune waxing cruel,
Break blessed ties and make foundations fuel—
Hold England's title deeds.

Keep as thy birthright that fine fear of God,
Better than sword and shield,
Whereby our fathers in their triumph trod
Senate or battle field,

164

Who only thus would yield
The homage granted to no tyrant's rod;
For promise of more noble generations
Rising from conquered harms,
And fairer women's charms,
The destinies of worlds and unborn nations,
Hang on thy baby arms.

ENGLAND'S MISSION.

God of the thunder, God of the calm,
Giveth us hammered hot on red forges
Blade of the lightning, though with a balm;
Sharpened in shadow's deep dreadful gorges—
He who is judgment, and yet is Love;
Serving us daily,
Serving us gaily
Down in the silence, down in the sadness;
King over madness,
As of the dove.
Forth from His labours, scourging the globe,
Cometh a Nero
Blood-drunk and trailing death as his robe—
Cometh the hero.

God of our England, God of the true,
Fashioned us greatly fit to be Lord's men
Dealing around to subjects their due,
Bringers of progress, sailors and swordsmen—
Destined to conquer peoples and guide;
Governing nations,
Digging foundations
Firm as the rockbed hewn out of granite,
Broad as a planet—
Throned at His side.
Ours is the mission, ours is the seal
If it be gory
Sometimes and solemn, now to reveal
God and His glory.

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God who is Goodness, God who is Power
Ruleth among us mending and making
Earth, by the travail sent as our dower—
Liberties, grown from shaping and shaking;
We are but strengthless tools in His hand.
Often with blunted
Methods or stunted
Wills, in our weakness, sorely we fail Him—
Nothing avail Him,
Nor His command.
But He forgiveth errors, and still
Metes us His duties;
And, by sweet mercy, out of the ill
Worketh more beauties.

God of our England, God of the Right
Bears with our lapses, leading us forward—
Mother of empires, justice and light
Scattered as seed cast southward and nor'ward,
Into the east lands, into the west.
Parliaments slowly,
Charters and holy
Churches or statutes, rise by us bidden;
Rise from the hidden
Heaven, in God's Breast;
As we go fighting on with His Law,
Not looking manward,
But all encompassed round in its awe
First in the vanward.

CROMWELL.

Destined man of iron, man of blood,
Riding on red revolution's flood
To the haven which the craven
Never reached who crawled through mud;
In thy pillared grandeur standing lone,
Not on pedestal of carven stone,
But in greatness and sedateness
Of the doings that enthrone;

166

Thou dost need no passing bust or line,
Nor the shadow of the awful shrine,
Thou whose story is the glory
Of a mandate most divine.

Thou art written on the broadest page
Of our brightest one heroic age,
When the martyrs won our charters,
Walking on the world as stage;
Thou art first among the foremost men,
Who with no unequal sword or pen,
Conquering treasure beyond measure,
Brought new truths into our ken;
Thou hast wrought for this imperial race
Something more than common meed or grace,
Living actions, not for factions,
But for every time and place.

Destined man of visions, with a lot
Hammered of eternity red-hot
To the stature of a nature
Dread in splendour and in spot;
Thou didst but for God His battles fight,
Not for party, in the solemn light
Of the seeing which was being
And put on immortal might;
Builded on the Everlasting Rock,
Native to thee and of one same block,
Thou hast beaconed on our weakened
Wills alike in shade and shock.

Live for ever in the larger mind
Of our England and all humankind,
By the beauty of that duty
Done, which left its breath behind.
Who shall compass thy august intents,
And thy thoughts' untravelled continents,
Thou the maker and the breaker
Of mere kings and parliaments?
Fate was stamped on thy tremendous brow
Clothed with thunder, and its lightning now

167

Is the token thou hast spoken,
Words at which yet nations bow.

THE CHARGE OF THE 21st LANCERS.

Knee to knee, lads, ride and steady
In your stirrups, stand and go
With a will against the foe,
All as one man ranked and ready,
Through eclipse and earthquake throe.
Break those legions out of joint,
Do not tarry,
Thrust or parry,
Meet their powder with the point;
It is England's power you carry,
England's honour that you save—
On to glory, though a grave.

Knee to knee, lads, grip the leather
As you front the leaden hail;
Do not falter, do not fail;
In among them romp together,
Reap red harvest with the flail.
Lo, an Empire at your heel
Greets with gladness
Splendid madness—
Give them blazes and cold steel.
Though they bring you wounds and sadness,
Husband every blow and breath;
On to triumph, if to death.

Knee to knee, lads, grant no quarter,
As the Dervish does to you;
Strike for England, dare and do,
While brave blood is shed as water
And you scarce can struggle through.
England bids you to the test
Of this fighting,
And each smiting
Buffet pierces her own breast;

168

Ah, a fallen kingdom's righting
Is your grand and goodly trust,
Should your portion be the dust.

Knee to knee, lads, cut a larger
Road of light across the gloom—
Courage finds a royal room
Yet for gallant man and charger,
With a portal out of doom.
Oh for England ride to-day,
Knit as brothers
For your mothers
And the wives so far away;
Though the rich fruits be another's,
And your bodies but the path,
Great will be the aftermath.

THE QUEEN'S WRIT RUNS.

Over the shoreland, under the foreland,
Inland and always the Queen's Writ runs;
None may deny it, none can defy it—
None from the dawn to the setting of suns.
Blow it out, bugle-man;
Tell it forth, fugle-man,
Round the wide world to the rolling of guns!
Honour it verily,
March to it merrily,
Holding the path which the Queen's Writ runs.
Strong as the mountains, deep as the fountains,
Justice is law where the Queen's Writ runs.

War with its racket arms the blue-jacket,
Red-coat and all, till the Queen's Writ runs;
Old earth is prouder, smelling the powder
Burnt to make brighter the face of the suns.
Misery, stay on it;
Sword blade and bayonet,
Usher it bringing the flag and the guns!
Make of the devilry,

169

Strife and its revelry
Carpet of blood where the Queen's Writ runs!
Liberty, kindness break through the blindness
Darkening the lands, where the Queen's Writ runs.

Blessing the wide ways, keeping the tide-ways
Open for Empire, the Queen's Writ runs;
Bearing new charters, more than the Garter's
Ribbon of rank, and sweet of the suns.
Thunders its oracle,
Where the wild coracle
(Pirate or slaver) is scared by its guns;
Northerly, Southerly
Blasts, by its motherly
Mandate are stirred, where the Queen's Writ runs.
As on the human breasts of a woman
Children are safe, where the Queen's Writ runs.

Roof of the nations, freedom's foundations,
Sowing the desert the Queen's Writ runs;
Peace and its plenty turn one to twenty
Corn sheaves, and shadows to ne'er-setting suns.
Life waxes glorious,
Labours victorious
Over fierce odds, at the flash of its guns;
Youth and its benison,
Love as with venison
Feast broken hearts, if the Queen's Writ runs.
None shall be longing vainly in wronging
Ills for redress, while the Queen's Writ runs.

WILSON'S LAST STAND.

Shoulder to shoulder they stood,
Strong men and good;
Only a handful, but still
All with one will,
Never to fly that last field—
Never to yield;

170

Wounded and wearied and spent,
Though yet unbent;
And if outworn they must lie,
Ready to die,
Shoulder to shoulder they stood,
Strong men and good.

Shoulder to shoulder they fought
Bravely, and wrought
Deeds that were wonders to tell—
Each ere they fell.
Horses and riders went down,
Wrapt in renown;
Haloed with history, red
Ripe with bloodshed;
Broken and slaughter-pursued,
But not subdued;
Shoulder to shoulder they fought
Bravely, and wrought.

Shoulder to shoulder they knelt,
Wounds never felt;
Flashing the pitiless ball,
Conquerors all;
Famished and sleepless and torn,
Faint and forlorn,
But with no thought of retreat
Or of defeat;
Slaying their hundreds and slain,
Heedless of pain;
Shoulder to shoulder they knelt,
Wounds never felt.

Shoulder to shoulder they lay,
Ghastly and gray,
Greeting the doom at the end
Rather than bend;
Living a centuried life
In that great strife,
There for our England's old name
Harvesting fame,

171

Couched on a glorious bed,
Dying and dead;
Shoulder to shoulder they lay,
Ghastly and gray.

“HOLD THE GUN!”

A Ballad of the Chitral Campaign.

“Hold the gun!”
This was the order
Of the captain in command,
When we met the Hill marauder
Under India's fiery sun;
And our belts we buckled closer, for we were resolved to stand.
Ah, the peril made us bolder,
As with shoulder unto shoulder
We the game had now begun,
All begrimed with smoke and powder
Though the enemies were legion and their Mollahs cursed us louder—
“Hold the gun!”

“Hold the gun!”
It was with blazes
And red ruin that we spat,
Up among those rocky mazes;
And our foemen liked the fun,
Though we gave them hell and shrapnel and a pretty dose of that;
For those charcoal-painted devils
Did not shirk the bloody revels,
And with patience might have won;
But we rammed the charges tighter,
And we sent right home their message and our bayonets waved brighter;—
“Hold the gun!”

“Hold the gun!”
It was for glory

172

And the English name we stood,
Though the ground was hot and gory,
And the beggars would not run;
But we knew a soldier's duty, and our purpose still was good.
As the battle-cloud hung dimmer,
O we longed to see the glimmer
Of the steel, though there was none,
That showed friends were drawing nearer;
But we only saw the whites of hostile eyes, and hope grew drearer;—
“Hold the gun!”

“Hold the gun!”
The shots came quicker,
And the Chitral aim was true,
While our gallant men fell thicker
If they tumbled one by one;
And for every pal they potted, we wiped out at least our two.
But they rushed on fierce and faster,
And the rocks rained down disaster,
And the daylight was nigh done;
But (you see) we had our order,
And we kept a ring of iron round our broken little border;—
“Hold the gun!”

“Hold the gun!”
When we waxed fewer
Firm our courage held out yet,
And we played in turn pursuer,
Giving every mother's son
That would face us short damnation with the blooming bayonet.
If we met assaults or sallied,
Close our thinning ranks we rallied,
Though a falling stone might stun
Here and there a bleeding brother;

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We were ready for the loss, and in his place arose another;—
“Hold the gun!”

“Hold the gun!”
When all but honour
Now was gone, and England seemed
Doomed with black eclipse upon her
And her stainless flag undone,
Through the hubbub came a cheering, which at first we thought we dreamed;
Till with blinded eyes and parching
Throats, we heard our comrades marching,
And the web that Chitral spun,
In a moment then was shattered
To the winds, and all those charcoal sketches rubbed clean out or scattered;—
“Hold the gun!”

NELSON.

He washed his face in sea-water,
He drank the stinging brine
Within his veins as wine;
And to the mad wind's dulcimer,
He reached as God's own messenger
A stature half divine;
The sun and clouds alike were good,
And storms with him claimed brotherhood;
While all the motion of the ocean
In free and tameless flood,
With all the graces of wide spaces,
Was mingled in his blood.

He shaped his course as gallant ships,
That travel fast and far
Beneath the pilot star;
The tempest taught him with its whips
And battle out of iron lips,
That Duty known no bar;

174

And thus from adverse shades and shocks,
To stepping-stones grew stumbling-blocks;
And the wild shudder of the rudder
Was music to his ears,
The salt surge savour built him braver
Of splendid faiths and fears.

His roof was but the open sky,
His walls the open air,
And with their freshness fair
He learnt as stately days went by
The secret of Eternity,
The riddle of despair:
And thence came ready to his hand,
The royal instinct of command;
And by his folding trials' moulding
He gathered conquering will,
And from their cruel furnace fuel
Plucked victory out of ill.

Thereby he quarried him a name
For ever broad and bright,
Which is our beacon light;
And his is one with England's fame
That carries down its scorn of shame,
To be our common right;
And still he holds our country's helm,
The guide and glory of the Realm:
And now with thunder voice the wonder
Of his tremendous charge,
A signal flying on undying,
Shall write our history large.

THE BLUE RIBAND OF THE SEA.

Let England will to do it,
And every mother's son
Would give his life unto it
And wager it be done.
There's many a good life spoiling

175

For just a gallant spin,
A-fire for tasks of toiling
And ready to romp in.
So launch the merry ship, my boys,
And gaily voyage forth;
Let women stay at home with toys,
We'll go a-sailing North.

Let England find the money,
And all will furnish men
(Not nursed on milk and honey),
To venture there and then.
Stout hands will turn from tilling,
And hearts (that never fear'd
A foe) be more than willing,
To pluck the Ice-king's beard.
So send the merry ship, my lads,
By frozen cape and Forth;
Leave politicians' fuss and fads,
And go a-sailing North.

Let England raise a finger,
Towards that dim Arctic Zone;
And would a seaman linger,
To dare the Ice-king's throne?
With passion would be blended
The myriads' rival plea,
To win and wear that splendid
Blue riband of the sea.
So man the merry ship, my boys,
And prove your iron worth;
Leave clerks and girls their quiet joys,
And go a-sailing North.

Let England only ask it,
And poverty would spare
Or empty store and basket,
To have a little share.
While others feast and fiddle
Or lounge in silken rest,
Our knights will read the riddle

176

Locked in the Ice-king's breast.
So speed the merry ship, my lads,
And bravely journey forth;
Thank God, we yet have Galahads
To go a-sailing North.

BOOT AND SADDLE.

A True Incident in the Matabele Campaigm.

Mashangombi's was the rat-hole,
Which we had to draw ere day,
Heedless whether this or that hole—
If we only found a way;
Up among the iron furrows
Of the rocks, where packed in burrows
Safe the rats in shelter lay.
No misgiving, not a fear—
Nor was I the last astraddle
Who kept straining nerve and ear,
When the bugle sounded clear—
“Boot and saddle!”

Right away went men and horses,
Both as eager for the fun;
Through the drifts and dried-up courses,
Where like mad the waters run
After storms or through the winters,
Mashing all they meet to splinters—
Ready, hand and sword and gun.
Every eye was keen to mark,
And the tongue alone seemed idle
As we scanned each crevice dark—
Bit and bridle!

Here and there the startled chirrup
Of strange creatures, as we go
Standing sometimes in the stirrup,
Just to get a bigger show;
Till we gain our point, the entry—
There the pass, no sign of sentry,

177

Not a sound above, below!
Clear the coast, the savage gave
Never hint to south or norward;
Was he napping in his cave,
With that quiet like the grave?—
Steady, forward!

Further in; the rats were sleeping;
We would grimly smoke them out,
With a dose of lead for keeping
And a fence of flame about;
They might wake perhaps from shelter,
At our bullets' ghastly pelter,
To the brief and bloody rout!—
But, next moment, we were wrapt
Down to saddle girth and leather
In the fire of foes unmapt;
We were turned, and fairly trapt—
“Keep together!”

On they pour in thousands, hurling
Steel that stabbed and belching ball
From a host of rifles, curling
Serpent-wise around us all.
Front and flank and rear, they tumbled
Nearer, darker, as we fumbled—
Till we heard the Captain's call,
“Each man for himself, and back!”
So we rushed those rocky mazes,
With that torrent grim and black
Dealing ruin in our track—
Death and blazes!

Ah, that bullet! How it shattered
Vein and tissue to the bone;
Dropt me faint and blood-bespattered,
Helpless on a bed of stone!
While the mare which oft had eaten
From my hand, caressed, unbeaten,
Left her master doomed, alone.
Limply then I lay in dread,

178

Racked with torture, sick and under—
Hearing, as through vapours red
And with reeling heart and head,
Hoofs of thunder!

Was I dreaming? By the boulder
Where I huddled as I fell,
Stood the steed beside my shoulder
Faithful, fain to serve me well.
Whinnying softly, then, to screen me
From the foe, she knelt between me
And that circling human hell.
Tenderly she touched my face
With the nose that knew my petting,
Ripe for the last glorious race
And her comrade's own embrace—
Unforgetting!

O her haunches heaved and quivered
With the passion freely brought
For the life to be delivered,
Though she first with demons fought;
While her large eyes gleamed and glistened
And her ears down-pointing listened,
Waiting for the answer sought.
Till a sudden wave of might
Set me once again astraddle
On the seat of saving flight,
Plucked from very jaws of night—
Boot and saddle!

ATBARA.

Mahmoud silent lay and surly
Hid in desert scrub and thorn,
While the sand-wind gray with gurly
Blasts upon our face was borne;
Some would never see the morn,
Though they longed for stroke of steel and the battle's hurly-burly.

179

Every face was set and knitted
With the stirring of the strain,
And each ready right hand fitted
To its weapon, which the slain
Soon would give a splendid stain—
What were wounds or death, if life in the act were well acquitted?

Ring of flame and roar of thunder
Now from silence sudden brake,
Wrath above the ruin under
With a voice avenging spake,
As if hell itself, awake,
Vomited red fury forth, out of earth that rent asunder.
Then the rush of men and horses
After iron rain and blast,
Bolts of doom on destined courses
As by one great engine cast;
Hungry for the prey at last,
Sure and swift like rolling seas hurled in hate from ocean sources.

Glorious moments, full as ages
With the passion of the fight,
While we seemed to tread the stages
Of a universe of light;
Death itself were pure delight,
As we faced those fearful odds and in blood wrote dazzling pages.
Waved the flag in front, a vision
And a promise of our due,
When the sword with sharp decision
Through those mazes cut a clue;
White and black were comrades true,
And the vaunted Dervish might turned to weakness and derision.

So we reaped the harvest, brother,
With the point and bitter blade,
In a whirl of smash and smother

180

And the dreadful din and shade;
Thus at last was reckoning made,
And I hardly deem the foe now will ask us for another.
Ah, we did remember Gordon
With Khartoum and all the shame,
Showing England was the warden
Of true freedom and old fame;
And our grand imperial name
Now will shake the farthest East, from the Nile unto the Jordan.

THE LONG RIGHT HAND.

With our strong right hand and our long right hand
We have broken the desert dearth,
And the thin red line is an iron band
Which has girdled around the earth;
And the slave-whip's crack from our conquering track
Has fled with its crimson crime,
And old England's sword that would serve the Lord
Has begun the better time.
With our long right hand and our strong right hand
We have sentinelled half the globe,
For the ocean isle and the Indian land
Are the gems of our country's robe.

With our glorious wont and victorious front
We have gathered the peoples in,
Till they bathed in our blessed Freedom's font
And awoke to a common kin.
For our briny walls and the palace halls
And our fame beneath the skies,
Have not builded us fair with the sun and air—
But the breath of our liberties.
With our glorious wont and victorious front,
We have bridled all winds and waves;
While we scatter the powers of woe and want,
On the path of our heroes' graves.

181

In our fearless way to the tearless Day
We have harnessed the fire and flood,
And the fields most far from its quickening ray
Are enriched by our martyrs' blood.
We have borne on our breast for the sufferers' rest
The worst wounds of the battle shock,
That the feeblest race might receive some grace
And a home in our equal Rock.
In our fearless way to the tearless Day
We have carried the lamp of Truth,
And the kingdoms crushed by a tyrant sway
Have arisen to dawn of youth.

With our long right hand and our strong right hand
We have leavened the world with law,
And the nations now all enfranchised stand
In the shade of its sheltering awe.
We have planted and sowed, we have never owed
But we paid with a double meed;
And the earth is more great than its old estate,
From the fruits of our gallant creed.
With our strong right hand and our long right hand,
We have shattered the league of Ill;
And the harvest won, from the sire to son,
We will keep for our children still.

THE GREAT POWDER MAGAZINE.

Thunder and lightning,
Iron and steel,
Taxes yet tight'ning,
Millions to heel,
Millions for battle,
Millions that rattle
Iron and steel,
Nations in arms,
Death and alarms,
Churches that reel,
Plots' grim pursuits,
Kings like dead fruits'

182

Castaway peel,
Demagogue swagger,
Dynamite, dagger,
Cannon and keel,
Tears in a flood,
Iron and blood,
Women who kneel,
Europe's armed camp,
Trumpet and tramp
Corpses might feel,
Pigs at the trough
With never enough,
Iron and steel,
Threats growing louder,
Millions to heel,
Earth all one powder
War magazine,
Cannon and keel,
Murder machine—
Who'll sit upon it,
Fly on a wheel?
Wanted a phrase,
Wanted a sonnet
Run off the reel,
Or a red bonnet,
Or some mad craze,
Iron and steel—
Then for the blaze!

TO THE MOST NOBLE THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY, K.G.

Great Cecil, of a stately stock
Built into England's centuried rock,
A worthy scion thou;
Thy head in England's need grown grey,
And foremost on our cosmic way,
May well with Empire bow.

183

But thy stout heart, serenely sure
Of purpose and in power secure,
Hath never once been bent;
And as on some predestined course,
Untouched by fear, unmoved by force,
Thou guidest Parliament.

The farthest whisper of lone lands,
The people's will, the Queen's commands,
The murmur of the mart;
Alike art heard, and turned by thee
To make our country yet more free,
And fill a nobler part.

The ugly shape of shadowed ill
Is tamed by thee, and moulded still
To its true destiny;
Thou hast the statesman's prophet dower,
Which looks beyond the passing hour
Into eternity.

If others fail, thou flinchest not
From burdens which are thy grand lot,
By thee with beauty graced;
Ah, nothing little, vain or mean,
And nothing common or unclean
Is in thy record traced.

Our charters are thy gems and gold,
And sweet in thine imperial hold
As breath of English skies;
Most gentle is thy rule and just,
And safe and honoured the proud trust
Of our old liberties.

But dearest is our Church, the shrine
Doth with thy homage fairer shine
Upon a broader stage;
For thou hast guarded and wilt guard
Her treasure and her Truth unscarred,
As our chief heritage.

184

And though mid cares of high intents
Thy heart to Science oft consents,
The hand is on this Realm;
And like some planet's awful sweep
Moves on our England, while we keep
A Cecil at the helm.

TO THE BLUEJACKET.

Come, tread the blue waves under,
Walk as the ocean free;
Clothed is thine arm with thunder,
All England goes with thee.
O at thy country's calling
Thou dost not heedless hark,
And into night if falling
Wilt leave a dazzling dark.
But live to fight her battles,
And love to conquer too,
When rain of iron rattles,
And blasts of buffets woo.
Thou art not struggling lightly,
For fortune and thy fame;
Nor singly set, if rightly
Uplifting our grand name.
Its majesty, its greatness
Are bucklered to thy breast;
And all its calm sedateness,
Strong as a sea at rest.
Strike, as if on thee only
Hung endless good and ill;
Thou art not standing lonely,
With thee strikes England still.

Now fearless take thy journey
Farther than eye can see,
And face the fiercest tourney—
All England goes with thee.
So put a bit and bridle
Upon the furious north,

185

Let not that hand be idle
Which Duty summons forth.
And break the billows' anger
With guiding rein and whip,
Until they sink to languor
And fawn in fellowship.
The tempests are the horses
Which thou wilt gaily ride,
And on their maddest courses
Thou bravest every tide.
But nowise turn or tarry,
With thy most precious freight;
Remember, thou dost carry
A glorious Empire's weight.
Then for our gracious Mother
And for our common rights,
Strive, as if strove no other—
With thee all England fights.

O in the name of Order,
One with the strength of three,
Push onward Freedom's border—
All England goes with thee.
For Truth, whate'er betide thee,
Carve into night a track;
God is Himself beside thee—
A people at thy back.
For justice and the beauty
Of blessed Light and Law,
Show earth Heaven's face in Duty—
Its loveliness of awe.
The waters are thy meadow,
Thy throne the iron crag;
And rests on thee, the shadow
Of our unsullied flag.
On some one with the morning
Our destiny may shine,
Eternity's adorning—
To-day it may be thine.
Watch, though the breakers bellow

186

In stormy gulfs or straits,
As if thou hadst no fellow—
With thee all England waits.

Come, to stern romps and racket
Which timid sailors flee,
War makes the bold bluejacket—
All England goes with thee.
The hope of future ages,
A blessing for each land,
Are but the golden pages
Now written by thy hand.
Repose is sweet, and pleasant
Kisses of wedded wife;
But, in thy spacious Present,
Lies others' boundless life.
Be true to God's vocation,
And to thyself be true;
Thou buildest a foundation,
Which centuries may rue.
Thine individual action
Is no small separate thing,
A passing gust of faction—
But an almighty spring.
Let nought turn back thy trying,
Or leave a shameful mark;
Brave deeds are not for dying,
And blossom in the dark.
Live in whatever station
The call of honour gives,
As if thou wast the nation—
With thee all England lives.

OUR FRONTIER MEN.

With the meeting
Of the dusk and dawn I hear them,
And in silences am near them.
At the greeting
And the iron play of swords

187

Ringing round our battle lords,
There they stand
On their guard or bravely gallop,
Wardens of the world and English land,
Pioneers of English might,
English law and English light.
Where the Eskimo's adventuring shallop
Would not voyage, there they stay
Watchers of the night and day,
Sternly still,
Armoured in the justice that is power;
Or through parching
Wildernesses grimly marching
Seek to do God's grand and holy will,
While they bid the desert laugh and flower.

Tall and stately,
Lo, they prize not petty spoiling
And demand no due but toiling
Spent sedately.
Conscious of a work in deeds,
Better than the strife of creeds
To be done;
They endure the heat and burden,
Wardens of the world and finely one
In their sufferings and their plan
To complete what God began,
Clothed in greatness as a proper guerdon.
Freedom is their breath, and force
From the Fountain's deeper source
Flows in veins
Channeled by the awful tide of Time;
And the ocean
With its boundless breadth and motion,
Nerves their hands for the imperial reins,
Weds their hearts to the imperial chime.

Come their voices
With a cheery challenge falling
Far away, and at its calling

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Earth rejoices.
They are very calm and strong,
And they hate the thought of wrong
Loving right;
Hand on blade or foot in stirrup,
Wardens of the world and men's delight,
Pioneers of precious truth
Giving back the old their youth.
Cry, as feeble as the nestling's chirrup,
Reaches them, and sends them forth
Champions of the South and North,
To redress
Outrages that else were borne in shame;
And the thunder
Of their horses' hoofs beats under
Evil, with the rule of righteousness,
In the dreadful and most Blessed Name.

High and solemn
Is their character and carriage,
Where the great and meek in marriage
Build one column.
Duty raises them as kings
Far above all meaner things,
To their charge—
Liberty, to serve the nations;
Wardens of the world, they keep the marge
Of our frontiers clear and just,
Equal to the awful trust
And lay charters on their fair foundations.
They are proudly bred and born
To a hope that were forlorn,
But for faith
In the mighty mission that they hold;
As appointed,
And with blood and fire anointed
To pursue no idle end or wraith,
Heaping up for others grain and gold.

189

THE WALLS OF ENGLAND.

What are the walls of England that fence our frontiers round,
And make a mighty shadow as dread as holy ground?
O not the ring of iron
Wrought by our gallant ships,
Which awfully environ
The land with thunderous lips;
And not the crimson surges crested with lightning steel,
Which break the stoutest barriers beneath our conquering heel;
Nor yet the wealth of nations
Heaped in her merchants' hold—
No greed her firm foundations,
Nor are her bulwarks gold.

What are the walls of England which keep our country strong,
When kingdoms pass and perish, and rampart us from wrong?
The liberties, the charters
Baptised in precious blood,
And wrung for us by martyrs
From bitter fire and flood;
The creed which is our glory with many a splendid spot,
All fashioned on fierce forges and hammered out red hot;
The freedom which we carry
Along our broadening way,
That lingers (if it tarry)
To spread a brighter day.

What are the walls of England whereon we greatly rest,
The buttresses and bastions that mould our Mother's breast?
The love of right and order
Which gather us one guild,

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And gird us with a border
Of empires we upbuild;
The law which lights our progress and scatters plenty wide,
Co-partner with the mercy that sitteth at God's side;
The justice joined to pity
Above an action mean,
Dealt out to man or city,
On which the suffering lean.

What are the walls of England by ages set and sure,
A fortress to the feeble, a hiding-place secure?
It is the Truth we treasure,
Our father's sacred trust,
Which works in all its pleasure
And saveth souls from rust;
The franchise which it giveth to tender hearts and true,
That ask no sordid wages and seek but others' due;
The faith that is not bounded,
And heeds no earthly shock—
These are our walls, and founded
On the Eternal Rock.

WELLINGTON.

Hewn out of rock, a marble man,
He laid upon his heart
One love (in England's larger plan),
And changed all Europe's chart.
In blood he sowed the blessed seed
Of liberty and life,
And fashioned duty as our creed
Out of the awful strife.
And thus he gave us goodly bounds,
From battles' bitter lore;
Fought out on Eton's playing grounds,
And mimic fights before.

Silent and swift with ready hand
To parry blows or thrust,

191

He bore the burden of command
As a great soldier must.
His prescient gaze saw through each plot,
In adverse hour or clime;
And, when he struck, he needed not
To strike a second time.
He shared his counsels but with God,
And moulded grand his age;
Invincible and stern, he trod
A solitary stage.

He had no equal—to his end,
Through thunder, fire and mist
He moved—and who would dare contend,
With the protagonist?
And (as no rival could) he kept
The nations in his hold,
And to the cannon music stept
Like demigods of old.
He never slaked a vulgar thirst
At any common source,
But rose by nature up the first
In right of utter force.

As Atlas did upraise the sky,
He guarded England's gate;
For in his heart was destiny,
And in his fortune fate.
Above the lowly cares of men
He looked to future times,
And heard with calm and broader ken
Afar the fuller chimes.
And thus a beacon still he stands
Beyond all shade and shock,
And builded on no fleeting sands
But in our country's rock.

THE FLAG OF ENGLAND.

What is the flag of England? Rise, from forgotten graves

192

And witness to its grandeur, enfranchised souls and slaves.
The shadow of its glory, the shelter of its roof
Takes the wide world beneath it, nor leaveth one aloof.
Its hospitable greatness, its universal breast
Is open to the exile and gives all peoples rest.
Force cannot live without it, fear does not dwell within,
And from its mighty presence the purer times begin.
O awful and imperial it lifts the lowly head,
And falls in dew and sunshine 'twixt dying hopes and dead.
It blazes o'er the vanward in every noble strife,
And has on earth no frontiers but liberty and life.

Where is the flag of England? Ask of the winds, that blow
On sand like burning lava and fields of Arctic snow;
Ask of the waves that thunder round coral isles, and beat
For ever at the portals of death's ice-armed seat.
And O when suns are setting, or foemen at the gate
Of weakness knock in terror, it rises above fate.
The shield of its protection confronts each iron shock,
And rolls the flood of evil back like a refuge rock.
As in a sacred fortress, it gathers to its side
The weary and the wounded, ere washed beneath the tide.
It is the rallying centre on desert coast or crag,
And when all light has faded shines on the English flag.

THE THUNDER RAM.

All the winds of earth and heaven
With the lightning for their leaven,
Ready rushed to battle out;
All the angry rolling waves
Tossed abroad like troubled graves,

193

Smote in vain her iron snout;
As she forged along the path
Of her predetermined wrath,
Where would be no aftermath
Blown afar in wreck and rout;
For the reaping and the heaping,
If death rode again about.

With the churning of her tread fast
Over billows, stern and steadfast,
Went that prodding iron nose;
Dark and dreadful, in the light
Of its own deep native night,
And that fixed and final pose;
Silent as the foot of fate
In its march of destined state,
Sure, however long or late,
At the glooming of the close;
To the shudder of the rudder,
Sank the sun a bloody rose.

At the throats of hostile thunder
Drave the Death-trap, and asunder
Clove the ranks of ridgèd swell;
While the crimson sweat poured down
Plashing decks, but could not drown
Purpose grim, though hundreds fell;
Splinters flew, and broken spars
Wedded fractured bolts and bars,
Mid a rain of fiery stars—
Howling shot and shrieking shell.
But to glory ploughed the gory
Monster, through that blinding hell.

OUR PIONEERS.

They are riding, they are riding past the outposts in the van,
Over deserts lone and dreary as they were since time began;

194

Through the solitude and silence, with the heavens above as brass
And the iron ground beneath them like a furnace, as they pass;
While the bleached and blasted remnants and the bones of younger earth,
And the skeletons of cities vast as worlds, bestrew the dearth
With the fragments of the fallen and the mighty that are dust,
Where the temples once were crowded and for ages wreaked their lust.
But they ride abroad in duty and they do not count the price,
If the lives they give are lavished in a solemn sacrifice;
For the honour of the nation which has sealed and sent them forth,
With her mandate and new charters from the freedom of the North.

They are sailing, they are sailing where no keel has voyaged yet,
Over tumbling bars and billows with adventuring canvas set;
In the toy boat, or with thunder of a floating fortress round
Driving back the ring of evil and enlarging freedom's bound;
At the helm of duty always going out to seek and save,
As the pioneers of progress—if they only leave a grave.
Wild the wind may rave and rally to destroy them, and the surge
Beat against them as they voyage with the fury of its scourge;
But across the sultry ocean or beneath the Arctic sky
They are speeding fearless forward with the foot of destiny.
They have bitted storms and bridled the great tideways with their law,
As they bear for God and country justice with its blessed awe.

195

They are standing, they are standing in the watchtowers of the East,
At the awful post of Duty 'mid the fiercer foe and beast;
Where the crag on precipices, perching like an eagle's nest,
Throws across a hundred mountains the red beacon in its breast.
With the ready sword and rifle, they are armoured most in pride—
That they keep the walls of England, which is watching at their side.
Through the blazing suns of noontide and the bitter cold and dark
There they stand with steadfast waiting, or lie down in ruin stark;
But they would not change their service and the burden that it brings,
For the bondage of the idle or the silken sloth of kings.
They uphold a famous Empire and our liberties and faith,
In that vantage-ground of glory which is not a passing wraith.

They are kneeling, they are kneeling and above a crimson sod,
When the battle rage is over—but they only kneel to God;
And they pray to Him for guidance, and they praise Him for the might
Which has bucklered them in peril and encompassed in the fight.
For they draw their grand commission and security of power
From the Lord of Hosts who sceptred their forefathers with His dower.
And they lean upon the bulwarks of His Providence, and march

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To the music of His orders 'neath the heavens that overarch.
But the strength with which He clothes them, or the sharpness of their swords,
Cometh not from earthly treasures—but its secret is the Lord's.
So they cannot choose but conquer, and the darkness from them flees,
When the victory beforehand first was won upon their knees.

SONG OF DAWNRISE.

England, awake!
The pillars tremble,
And those that (suckled at thy breast) partake
Of all the grandeur and with thee have grown,
No more dissemble
The doubts which littleness had never known.
Gird on the dreadful sword,
Estate thy ships
With thunder for the battles of the Lord
Who goes before and speaketh through thy lips;
And choose the smiters
Who turn not from the face of any foe
Or fiery throe,
But march straight on to their predestined end,
World-righters,
And to their purpose bend
Along a path appointed
The arms of iron like vessels of the clay
Refashioned in their proud imperial way,
As God's anointed.
The time for slumber
Hath passed and lo, it strikes, the fated hour,
Decreed for action under this gray sky
From all eternity.
Put off thy silken cumber
And use of gentle arts and elegance,

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Put on the dower
Which is thy glory and inheritance
Of awful Power;
And in the splendour of that dress
Which is the cause of righteousness,
Go forward;
Though to the dimness, now yet closer drawn,
The shy dear shadow of the coming dawn.
And on the bitted and the bridled wave,
That loyal slave
Which wafts thee shoreward
The tribute of each farthest clime and coast,
Launch thy stout fleets, and let the banner fly
Which is the enfranchised nations' boast
Of law and liberty.
England, awake!
For enemies are greedy and arise
In braggart weakness,
And think thy sons are fearful and forsake
The duty which their daring fathers led;
And fools despise
The day of meekness,
Won only by the blood so richly shed.
Horizons darken,
And on the anvil of the patient years
The sickle sharpens, from the toils and tears
Of suffering souls and damned and dying,
Which thou alone canst wield
In the red harvest-field.
The kingdoms hearken
For that true charter, which shall bid them be
Themselves and free;
And all the earth is crying
For justice unto God, who rules by thee.

WRITTEN IN RED.

Spread the Empire further, faster,
Spread the justice and the law,

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Let the countries know their master—
British peace and awe;
Let the strife for ages rife
Cease and sword and cannon rust,
And the nations firm foundations
Root in settled trust;
Write the map a broader red
Over field and over flood,
In the life so bravely shed
By our English blood.

Rolls the tide that as the ocean
Sweeps away the wrong and ill,
Leaving triumphs of devotion—
Quarried mine and mill;
As our race in royal place
Built upon its creed,
Pushes forward, southward, nor'ward,
Still with iron deed;
While before our progress path
Chartered by the Holy Page,
Fall the tyrannies of wrath
For our heritage.

Spread the Empire onward ever
With the faith its sure ally,
Piloted by great endeavour
Forth to fairer liberty:
Let the prate of ethnic hate
Hold its bitter stream at length,
While from prison lands arisen
Stay upon our strength;
Write the map a deeper red
Over flood and over field,
Till the peoples safely tread
Under England's shield.

Ours the word that more than charters
Binds the kingdoms into one,
Sealed by service of the martyrs
Grandly dared and done;

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Ours the lot without a spot
To control the future fate,
And by splendid doom attended
Earth to educate;
Ours the destiny and thought
All for others and to save,
If the brighter world be wrought
Only of our grave.

CUSTODES PATRIÆ.

O ye who hold our country's honour dear,
And stand betwixt us and a hundred dangers,
To which your watch and wisdom are not strangers
Nor swerve a moment for the taunt or tear;
When rolls the thunder and horizons under
Grow gray with menace of some monstrous fear,
We look to you to rend the clouds asunder
And guide us safely through the darkness drear,
If friends we trusted fail or swords have rusted
From peace which preys upon a kingdom's life,
We know that you will shape to glory strife
Out of the sloth with which we are encrusted.

Our liberties are your most solemn stake,
A charge to keep in their heroic measure
With stern delight of duty, as a treasure
Which centuries of suffering toiled to make;
The charters lifted out of shadows rifted
By iron arms which not a world could shake
From their high purpose, and by sorrow sifted
To blessings of which all the lands partake.
This mandate calling with its noble thralling
To you is sacred and a joy and might,
And it will lead us somehow to the light
Upon the rock from which there is no falling.

Yet not for party and the golden place
Of power direct us against ill and error,
But let the love of right which is a terror

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To adversaries yield you strength and grace.
And bravely holding if through death's dim Folding
The principles which buttress this fair State,
Be sure your spirit wears the hardy moulding
Which is alike our peril and our fate.
And not for favour with its flattering savour
Turn once aside to any lesser goal,
But steer us straight by rugged shore and shoal
By paths which have the ocean's breadth and Flavour.

With you abides the custody of creeds
Which if ye guard them will wax grand and purer,
And more than battle and its blades are surer
Bulwarks for all our many-nationed needs;
And with your caring jealous and unsparing
Do worthy acts to be immortal seeds,
And live fresh history in the gentle daring
Which proves and yet renews our title-deeds.
But for your station draw each inspiration
From the sole Fountain never spoiled or spent,
As much the first as last arbitrament,
Which is our England's one illumination.

TO THE PREMIER.

Est Modus in Rebus.

To thee, grand Cecil, in the rush of things
Around us and the tumult at our gate,
The shakings and the overshadowings,
We turn; to one who can with peril cope
In sure serenity of anchored hope,
Which finds occasions even in adverse fate
Commensurate with need. Thy larger look
Foresees beyond the bubbles of the times
With quantitative vision the full book
And far completed orb of change and chance,
Above the babble of brute circumstance,
And the one moment ethical that chimes
With the eternal truth beneath them all.

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No aimless edicts falter from thy lip
Schooled to the uses of wide statesmanship,
And quick to snatch from evils ere they fall
Advantage still, with staid consummate art
Of equal hand and no unequal heart
Sedate and fixed. And in these troubled years,
Which travail with insufferable fears,
When enemies are loud and some unseen;
Lo, thou dost bring a true proportioned mind
To meet the shock of battle, and between
The banded bars of hate to note the wind
Of vaster other currents, that will bear
Our vessel to the port where it would be;
Through storms that waft us forward, though they wear
An angry face, and buffets that make free.
The stumbling-blocks to thee are only stairs
Uplifting to a blue and better sky,
And big with rifts of opportunity.
There is a measure in all men's affairs,
Known unto him who needs not refuges
Of desperation, like the gambler's leap,
But steers a course of straight observances
With the ripe touch and educated glance.
Here is our strength, a bulwark broad and cheap,
Whereon the bases of this isle's romance
Rest, in the rocking of a hundred waves
And cruel weathers. England looks to thee.
Thou hast the philosophic eye to see
Horizons of the future, and in graves
The cradles of yet new adventures meet,
When this huge world will be one native street.
Thou hast the strong imperial arm to strike
And bless with sovereign Ministries alike,
Or reach across the kingdoms; and thy voice
Is law and light to dim and distant shores,
Where anarchy is the sole government,
And in its thunder music realms rejoice
Through all their heaving night incontinent
And yield to thee their faith and richer stores.

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Thy deep deliberate policies are just
And clothed with mercy like a royal dress,
A might more awful from its gentleness.
Thy will is deed and destiny. No gust
Of passion or an idle prejudice
Shall bid thee swerve a hairsbreadth from thy track
As foredecreed as duty, nor the wrack
Of toppling thrones or worlds of sacrifice
Doomed. Treaties come and go, a poor defence
Against an armed and hostile Europe. Thou
Art rooted in the rock of principles,
Which cannot veer and do not ever bow
Unto the backwash of blind outrun creeds,
Abiding in their own magnificence;
And at the tideways of great thoughts that roll
In the interpreting of higher needs,
For ever on by ordered miracles
Of services and fine intents that flower
And fruit in glory of a chastened power,
The earth to its inevitable goal.

THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISHMAN.

Sometimes, in grim and ghastly merriment,
Nature appeared to fashion frames
Of useless build and ugly names,
That were more suited for a cerement;
As if, by way of blind experiment,
Indulgences in gruesome games.
She seemed one sporting with her tools
In ceaseless play and curious trying,
At leisured labour dimly plying
Her work and forming worlds and fools;
And learning still herself, in schools
Of awful mirth and pain and dying.

She seemed to aim at something vaster
While scarcely knowing what she sought,
Though through the œons long she wrought

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With threads of dawning and disaster;
Because she could not make the Master,
Consummate in his act and thought.
She mixed the iron and moulded clay
With every sort of mighty leaven,
The flames of hell, the bliss of heaven;
She mingled with the sword to slay
The passion both of night and day,
And mystery of the virtues seven.

So then, with wind that shakes the Norlands,
She fused the glory of the sea
And sunny freshness of the lea;
She took the stubborn strength of forelands,
And blent it with the shade of shorelands
Which listen to the wild waves' plea.
The blood of grapes, the cruel frost
And all the sweet and all the bitter,
The coarsest grain, the fineness fitter
She dashed with snow of peaks uncrost
And dreadful spaces tempest-tost—
But tuned them with the songbird's twitter.

The salt of gray unvoyaged ocean
Where never yet a sail was spread,
Without a bottom for the lead,
She joined to gentlest maid's devotion
And wrath of maddest mad commotion
Which breaks the shackles of the dead.
She chose the rooting of the tree
By storm and heat and winter harried,
The stillness where no strife has tarried
In solitude that none may see;
And cheered them with whate'er is free,
By hate unwarped, by love upcarried.

She poured the courage of the martyr
Into her work, the wealth of air,
The climbing of the temple stair,
And duty far too proud to barter
One right for all enchantments fair—

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And gave to it her broadest charter.
The wandering splendour of the sky,
The enterprise that can't be headed
To fierceness of the fire she wedded,
And forged red-hot to liberty;
But deep down in eternity,
The bases of its life were bedded.

The fulness of a perfect stature,
With beauty from the forest lone
And pureness as a bridal zone,
She linked to love of legislature;
And adding power in judicature,
She hardened this to grit of stone.
But then she blessed her finished plan
And breathed into it true divinity,
Large frankness, grace of shy virginity—
Whatever mortal may or can;
And thus she made the Englishman,
Of homely earth and high infinity.

RUSSIAN PEACE.

“Russia continues to pursue her policy of peace.”
The Times, 1 May, 1896.

We know the feelings of the fox
To geese and fowls are pure devotion,
If mainly meant for his promotion—
While his good taste is orthodox.
We know the wolf for tender sheep,
If they should chance to think it harder,
Combines affection with his ardour
Determined what he gets to keep—
In calm of death's unwaking sleep,
With love that's bounded by the larder.
And Russia's kindness has no lease,
An endless “Policy of Peace.”

Religiously she on her path
Of civilizing power and progress,
Pursues her mission like an ogress

205

And leaves us even no aftermath.
Devouring in her Christian creed
A valley here and there a village,
She ploughs the land with ruddy tillage
And broadcast sows the generous seed;
She makes all prostrate kingdoms bleed,
And gives them to the Cross and pillage;
Wipes out in rapine each rude crease,
And wires a “Policy of Peace.”

But here the Khanates pave her road
And even the Afghan realm she fingers,
Or at the gate of China lingers
And wants to ease her heavy load.
There on the Pamirs is her mat,
And everywhere she cuts new slices
Or makes a tool of Turkish vices;
She trifles with the Persian cat,
And pushes closer to Herat
The hand that threatens or entices.
The rouble is the ready grease,
To smooth her “Policy of Peace.”

Yes, Russia labours with the Lord
For others and her little coffers,
And to confiding peoples offers
The blessings of her faith and sword.
Stout Missionaries bear her arms
With sisters, candlesticks and crosses,
The sacred bones and private glosses,
And all her panoply of charms;
To heal the Abyssinians' harms,
And soothe the Negus for his losses.
While as the graves on graves increase,
She spreads her “Policy of Peace.”

Her philanthropic raids in lust
Of land go on, though rather grimly,
To those who read her mandate dimly
In burning towns and wrack and dust.
We mark a silence sad and cold

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Bequeathed to every subject nation,
Which humbly bows to her salvation;
It savours of the winter's hold,
Or quiet in the burial mould
And the still churchyard's desolation.
But yet her mercies do not cease,
And show her “Policy of Peace.”

HER MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY.

Here is health to her and wealth to her,
The First Lady of the Land;
And all honour rest upon her,
With fresh empire for her hand.
To the Good Queen in her pureness,
May the future times yet bear
Only blessing and secureness,
And a brighter crown to wear.
For she walks in love and beauty
Like the sunshine of our coast,
And the troth she keeps with duty
In our buttress and our boast.

Here is health to her and wealth to her,
The First Lady of the Land;
May the highways and the byeways
Be content with her command.
May the reverence of the nations
Be the safeguard of her seat,
From the Arctic constellations
To the fiery Afric heat.
May a thousand subject races
For her justice make a road,
While they prove her gentle graces
Which would share their heaviest load.

Here is health to her and wealth to her,
The First Lady of the Land;
And may weakness, in the meekness
Of her mercy, stronger stand.

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For her word is law and carries
Hope to men and liberty,
And to sufferers though it tarries
Yet her will is destiny.
Life is she to prostrate masses,
And the shadow of her throne
Is the light of all the classes,
And they lean on her alone.

Here is health to her and wealth to her,
The First Lady of the Land;
O may order be her border,
And in peace her bulwarks plann'd.
May our love uplift her station
And for ever on it fall,
For in truth she lays foundation
And of worship builds her wall.
Yes, from pavement to the steeple
Where the bells her praises sound,
May the prayers of the whole people
Like a garment wrap her round.

WILD OATS.

The night was dark as the darkest hell,
But his heart it throbbed like a marriage bell—
Hurrah!
For he saw his duty and did it well,
Where the red ground reeked as the harvest fell—
Hurrah!

He had chosen it all of his own free will,
To spike the gun and its iron ill—
Hurrah!
Which of awful death had drunk its fill,
And was belching doom and murder still—
Hurrah!

He had lost his fortune and fame, and now
There was grim resolve on the wrinkled brow—
Hurrah!

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And his breast was stirred with a fiery vow,
If he broke yet his purpose would not bow—
Hurrah!

He was merely a wreck and a ruined man,
Till their beamed in his soul a broader plan—
Hurrah!
By a road that through splendid danger ran,
And the drum-beat of true life began—
Hurrah!

For the steadfast nerves were as tense as steel,
And the conquered vices crouched at heel—
Hurrah!
And he only longed for the battle reel
Where blow meets blow, and the vanquished kneel—
Hurrah!

He could share with none the doubtful deed,
And the dreadful joy that had given him speed—
Hurrah!
He must stand alone in his desperate need,
And of flame reforge his soldier's creed—
Hurrah!

And its youth returned to the ready hand,
He was clothed in the glory of his land—
Hurrah!
O it brightened every evil brand,
And his look had the lightning of command—
Hurrah!

In a smother of smoke, in a blaze of fire
Which wrapped him round in a warrior's tire—
Hurrah!
With the jewels none may get for hire,
He drew to the goal of his grand desire—
Hurrah!

There was riving flesh, with the feint and thrust,
And those demon figures laid in dust—
Hurrah!

209

With a strong straight point and a simple trust
In the Lord of Hosts, and a quarrel just—
Hurrah!

There were shouts and curses and singing lead,
And a lane between dying forms and dead—
Hurrah!
With the crimson sweat so freely shed,
And the onward one predetermined tread—
Hurrah!

And no sense of pain or a single fear,
But a sound of thunder in his ear—
Hurrah!
As if earth and heaven at last were near,
And a wandering soul to God made dear—
Hurrah!

He will wash with blood the accusing stains,
And burst in fight the prisoner's chains—
Hurrah!
And delight in wounds and count them gains,
Be it life or death that the hour ordains—
Hurrah!

So he spiked the gun before dawn of day,
And to victory thus he led the way—
Hurrah!
Which over his bleeding body lay,
And kept an upheaving world at bay—
Hurrah!

THE THIN RED LINE.

Closer up, Tommy, stand
To the colours and strike
For the Queen and our country and all;
Give them hell out of hand,
If we suffer alike—
We will conquer them yet, though we fall,
Let them boast of their numbers and strength,

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And feel certain to win
With the odds and their swagger at length,
And as devils environ;
We will merely go in,
With hot blood and cold iron.

Rally round the old flag,
Tommy, bracing your powers
To hit hard for its honour and fame;
Ravelled down to a rag
By the bullets in showers,
But unvanquished and flying the same.
They shall get a good belly full now
And a gorier bed,
Than they wanted who thought we would bow;
Through the smoke and its mazes,
With sheer powder and lead
Reaping death and red blazes

Fill in, Tommy, the blanks
Made by shell and the shot
That we would not escape if we might;
They may riddle our ranks,
It is part of the lot
For a soldier and duty's delight.
Send it home, every ball, every thrust,
Knock their line out of joint
And their noses as well in the dust;
Let's agree just to differ
At the bayonet's point,
And leave some of them stiffer.

If they are ten to one,
Tommy, think of the glee
When the fighting is over and past;
Work remains to be done,
While our England is free
And a wrong to redress-though the last.
They are breaking before our firm face,
And their regiments reel
As we lock in a deadly embrace;

211

They grow weak, we wax bolder;
Steady now, and blue steel
Straight and true from the shoulder.

SONG OF EMPIRE.

O we need not stick at trifles and a thousand leagues or two—
It was English brains or rifles that have shown us what to do,
And the only way to winnings through the war-shock and the shade
From the seeds of small beginnings to the fruitful bough and blade.
Up the Congo, and the Niger, with the Tamil or the tiger,
He has spread his rugged speech;
And his justice is the haven, which the captive and the craven
From their misery beseech.
While the kingdoms take their easy course or trifle with the hem,
He is sounding the Zambesi with his national “Goddem;”
If you rake the lowest gutter or the North Pole in your plan,
You will find before the stutter of the stormy Englishman.

On the Gambia, in the quarters of the savages most vile,
Down the lazy lotus waters of the mighty mystic Nile,
Mark how English wealth is making a new highway for the earth
And the iron arm is shaking the dead countries out of dearth!
Through the tents of roaming Tartars and the houris without garters
Rolls his ready capital,

212

And our colours gleam and shiver in the sunshine of each river
From the Seine to Senegal.
On the rooftree's virgin summit of the world, in every clime,
And below the deepest plummet in the ocean ooze and slime,
Through the backwoods with the bearing of a God, at Ispahan,
You will run against the swearing or the sweating Englishman.

It's the energy and action in our universal race,
Which have conquered fevered faction and the pestilence's place;
And because they were not idle and disdained the coward's plea,
Have imposed a bit and bridle on the tossing of the sea.
These the mountain rock have tunneled and the furnace tamed and funneled
And led captive with their tie,
Which were bound to go on fighting for the good and for the righting
And must ever do or die.
Ah, the print of his heroic hand is written clear as Fate
And endurance stern as stoic pride in loving and in hate,
At the meeting of the nations, in the parliament or ban—
Under all the tried foundations the imperial Englishman.

With the sword and with the sceptre, by the conquests of the mind,
He is foremost and adepter and a power that none can bind;
In the commerce keen to travel and the thought that is athirst

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For more knowledge to unravel, he steps boldly forth and first.
He may stumble or be straying into feasts instead of praying,
When the season calls a fast;
But if drunk at times or driven from the helm with bulwarks riven,
He shall dominate at last.
If behind the counter standing or in Senates passing laws,
For his hold is the commanding and the crown, whate'er his flaws;
He by nature is the singled One to work what mortal can,
And of blood and iron mingled is the regnant Englishman.

INDIA'S HEROES.

Give me a pen of fire,
And thought clothed in the thunder
Of catholic desire
That breaks men's hearts asunder;
And then I shall not duly sing
The deeds that through all ages ring
Of heroes who made empire spring,
And sowed their lives thereunder.
For who can justly tell
Of souls, the Grand Refiner
Purged in a flaming hell,
To issue thence diviner?

Give me a fancy tipt
With sunrise and its glory,
And in the earthquake dipt
Of battle grim and gory;
And then I should but feebly write
Of saintlinesses fair and white,
And martyrs' patience infinite
Crowned like some promontory.

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For fancy none nor pen
Can paint, in hues that bound us,
How gods once mixed with men—
To show the Heaven around us.

BUILDERS OF EMPIRE.

Builders of Empire, makers of men,
Terrible, tall,
Girt with the glaive or mightier pen
Governing all;
Blood and the iron arm and environ
You as our bulwarks, buttress and wall.
Health to you, wealth to you,
Riches and rank
Not of the giving earth, or a living
Often but blank.
Kings may go down, but ye never fail—
HAIL!

Hewn of the granite, carving us fame
Steadfast and strong
Out of the thunder, out of the flame,
Compassed with song.
Ours is the glory, ours is the story
Writ by your grand deeds, living and long.
Grace to you, place to you
Unto all time,
Bright'ning the stages still of the ages
Over each clime;
Ye, that have conquered cross and the nail,
HAIL!

Drawing the future burden and bliss
Into your sweep,
Bridging the desert sand or abyss
Curtained in sleep;
Huge and heroic, saint or the stoic,
Bridling the levin, bitting the deep!
Power to you, dower to you,

215

Passionate souls,
Forging us beauties deathless of duties'
Loftiest goals.
Worlds set or sicken, ye do not ail;
HAIL!

Pillars of Church, columns of State,
Yours is the hand
Opening and shutting fortunes and fates,
Worthy our land;
Laying your measure, moulding at pleasure
Laws and our lives by kingly command.
Might to you, light to you
Endless and large,
Gathering praises yet as it raises
Dawn without marge.
Dynasties tremble, ye do not quail;
HAIL!

Builders of empire, makers of men
Noble as ye,
Guides of the globe in statesmanlike ken
Forming it free;
Greatly believing, greatly achieving
Wonders that only œons shall see.
Health to you, wealth to you
Better than gold;
Love of a nation, song's celebration,
Thanks never old;
Peoples may perish, ye never fail—
HAIL!

THE MODERN SOLDIER.

In his pouch he carries fifty lives and more,
Fifty lives of goodly men
Ready for the reaping, when
He requires their store.
At a thousand paces
And for wider spaces,

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He is sure to reach them with his rifle's bore.
Terrible and true his aim,
Lightning breath and winged death
Bound to mangle or to maim;
With his message driven through red tissues riven,
Into ruin past reclaim.

Not one soldier but a mighty host is he,
Multiplied by demon skill
To a dreadful murder-mill,
Duly thus to be;
Clothed with fear and lasting
Havoc, grimly blasting
All that faces him and will not hide or flee.
Mere machine of killing force
Flashing doom and damned gloom
On our noontide's sunny source,
Without pulse or pity for the soul or city
Grinding his destructive course.

TIME WAS.

Time was, when England would not care
To ask the safer road,
But did whatever men could dare
And bore her brother's load.
She went her own imperial way,
With justice at the helm;
And sought not where the shelter lay,
Or pickings from the realm.
She doubted not it might be done,
Nor cringed to powerful friends;
But stept, with purpose straight and one,
To her determined ends.

But now she muddles here and there,
Or meddles up and down;
And, though her flag is everywhere,
Not so is her renown.
She counts her halfpence to put by,

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And guards the precious till;
While hers is but the policy,
To heap more money still.
She watches for the rise and fall,
Forgetting her dread dower;
As if she were a market stall,
And not a historied power.

Time was, when prudence never made
The measure of her act;
She only did as duty bade,
And kept with honour pact.
For on a righteous law she leant,
Which was in mercy laid;
She said out boldly what she meant,
And meant whate'er she said.
She dwelt in day, and largely shaped
The lowliest turn or tie;
And courted simple truth, nor draped
The profit with a lie.

But now she is afraid to strike,
A single honest blow;
She waits on each event alike,
And snaps at crumbs below.
A timid foe, a false ally,
She flouts her sacred call;
Distrusted even in liberty,
Despised by one and all.
She wears the solemn mask of might,
But sheathes a rusty blade;
And though parading love of light,
She shuffles in the shade.

GOD BLESS OUR QUEEN.

God bless our Queen with every gift,
That makes a mighty nation;
And yet to loftier heights uplift
Her fame, on His foundation!

218

And may the Bible as of old
Sealed by the blood of martyrs,
And not our glory or our gold,
Be England's choice and charters.

God bless the Church, and strengthen still
With His own broader presage,
Alike in good report and ill,
Her true and holy message—
And grant that she may carry light
Mid darkest woe and welter,
And offer all as common right
A hospitable shelter.

God bless the State, which firmly stands
In freedom's ancient border,
To be a witness through the lands
Of Justice and its order.
And let her not be idly bent
By empty fears or faction.
But above party government
Rule with no sordid action.

God bless us all, that every one
Who calls this England Mother,
May prove by daily kindness done
He holds each man his brother!
And thus we shall to others give
The Peace, that is His pleasure;
And keep the faith, whereby we live,
Our solemn trust and treasure.

THE POET'S SWAN SONG.

This is the last song but not the past song
Wrought by the Poet, made for the Masses,
Breathing the salt sea, bringing the man's plea
Broader than classes.
Might of the mountains, sweep of the sky,
Murmur of fountains asking reply
Chanted by king Love, sweet as the ring dove

219

Cooing thereby.
Such is the Fate gift, such is the State gift
Greeting far times,
Rushing of storm wind, fragrance of old Ind,
Mingling all chimes.

“I on these lute strings ere they are mute strings,
Strike as the Master only is able
Music, to lead right parties that seek night,
Worshipping fable.
Open the porches out of the dark
Bright as with torches, safe as an Ark,
Showing me true things meant for a clue, things
Whereto we hark.
Follow the creed on, helping our need on
Over a way
Rugged with sharp flint, many a blood print—
Ending in day.

“Stand by the old Book, stand by the gold Book
Giving us statutes of the Creator
Fresh from Divine art, serve with a glad heart
The Legislator.
Gospels are many, Truth is but one
Fairer than any, and for all done;
Lifting to stature, full as God's Nature,
Liberty's son.
Hold to the pure Fact, rest on secure Fact,
Written in Blood;
Carry the Cross still, over the high hill,
Over the flood.

“Honour the best way, honour the blest way
Trodden by brave men winning or trying,
Crowned through grim pain, loving to get gain
Though but by dying.
Fashions are sorrow, eaten with blight;
Work for the morrow and the new might
Shed on the toilers, leaving the spoilers
Passing delight.
Thus shall ye draw yet, thus have as law yet

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Ocean's wild breath;
And, whatso'er be, life would remain free—
Victor of death.”

IN HONOREM V.R.I. 20 JUNE, 1897.

Best of wives and best of mothers,
Best of women, Gracious Queen,
Who hast made all men as brothers
If with unity unseen;
And conjoined in gentle nations
Our divided populations,
With no bar but love between!
Honoured heart of royal nature,
More than beautiful bright soul,
Thou hast risen up to the stature
Of a perfect self-control;
And we bless thee and address thee,
Proved alike in good and ill,
Re-anointed, re-appointed
Now with universal will.
First of Ladies, in the shelter
Of thy kindness we have grown,
Through the shadow wild and welter,
To find liberty our own;
And thy life has been the measure
Of our England's grandest treasure,
And a truth till then unknown.

Yes, with giant powers and paces
We have leapt into the light,
With its heritage of graces
And the gift of godlike might;
O thy rule has added splendour
To our progress, by surrender
For our weal of ancient right.
Children, plucked from Moloch orgies
In the cruel mine and mill,
Scarred by blows or flaming forges
Which upon them wreaked their fill,

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Hail affection and protection
Clasping them as with a zone,
And thy thirsty pity bursting
Like a fountain from the Throne.
And the wants of maid and matron
Long unheard and long denied,
Knew in thee a noble patron—
One by sorrow not untried.
Lo, they looked to thee in fateful
Hours and won responses grateful,
And their fetters were untied.

Best of wives and best of mothers,
Best of women, Gracious Queen;
When we gat no help from others,
Thy great mercy was our screen;
To the castle, and the cottage
With its humble mess of pottage,
Thou hast ever faithful been.
In the doom of fear or famine,
When the statesman hurried by
Or would fain at ease examine
Figures, vast thy sympathy.
Thou wast ready, with a steady
Love that did not once deceive;
Thy pure living, more than giving,
Soothed when nothing could relieve.
First of Ladies, with the sweetness
Of thy sixty glorious years
We have gained a rich completeness,
For our triumphs and our tears;
From the clear and calm endurance
Of thy care, and its assurance
Which the heart to heart endears.

O the marvels and the magic
Springing as beneath thy rod,
With a balm for burdens tragic
And a ladder up to God;
When to souls condemned to sickness

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Healing came in hopeful quickness,
And with science blessing trod!
Pain was banished, time and distance
Conquered by compelling thought,
And the bounds that seemed resistance
Were to soft subjection brought.
Space was travelled, and unravelled
Heaven its riddles yielded up;
And the mortal, at its portal,
Deeply drank nepenthe's cup.
Bridled steam and bitted lightning
Yoked thy chariot as it flew
Over lands and waters, bright'ning
Earth with miracles anew;
While a fresh and fairer nation,
Like some goodly young creation,
Round the world a wonder grew.

Best of wives and best of mothers,
Best of women, Gracious Queen,
Age with which oblivion smothers
Lesser lights unfolds thy sheen;
And its story shall wax greater
Yet, with majesty sedater,
And a central sun be seen.
Live, when into the late darkness
Thou hast stept victorious still,
And thy hand assumes the starkness
Of our common human ill!
Live, in kindness, mid the blindness
Which descends upon us all;
And in pleasant fancies present,
Reign when other sovereigns fall!
Be remembered, not like sages
By profoundness of wise arts,
But as written on the pages
Of a thousand thankful hearts;
As the servant crowned and willing
Of a people's choice, fulfilling
But for them thy deathless parts.

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Not the iron wall of vessels
Girdling us against our foes,
Not the famous flag that wrestles
Proudly with the thunder throes;
Not the steel-tipt ranks of rifles
Fronting dangers as if trifles,
In a blood-red world of woes;
Not the rule of righteous order
Carried far in heathen night,
Till it plants our peaceful border
Up on murder's broken might;
Not the science with defiance
Of the stormy wind and wave,
Onward bringing light and wringing
Secrets from the very grave!
None of these, although the strongest,
Worthy records of thy sway;
But that love, which wears the longest,
Breathing from thy blessed way;
And the life, by lofty pureness,
Stretching forth with holy sureness
To the broader better Day.

ENGLAND'S FRONTIERS.

Others may boast lines
More scientific,
Chosen and charted with painting and talk;
But where the enemy, proud or pacific,
Lies, are our coast lines—
England's free walk.
We know no map-stuff,
Parchment or pap-stuff,
We honour none;
Only the frontiers ruled by our rifles,
Wrung by the sword sway,
Held in the Lord's way,
When there are great deeds of history done
And hearts feel hearts and they cease from their trifles.

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We bend to no man,
Give us the foeman
Thousands of miles from our shelter and shores,
Armed to the teeth and with cannon that bristles
Saucily guarding his jewels and stores;
England is there, lads—
England is where, lads,
Rude strokes are falling and iron rain whistles
Down the poor ruin of pasteboard and wrongs—
Hammer and tongs.

Others are tarriers,
Weighing the peril
Coldly with scales and an eye to the till,
Doomed to a policy stupid and sterile;
England no barriers
Heeds, but her will.
We have weighed anchor,
While they but hanker
Idly for gains;
We are at blows, lads, and in the red middle
Rolled by the battle,
Careless of tattle,
Bathed in the spatter of blood and of brains
While they are dreaming of what they may fiddle.
We often tread first,
Plunging in head first
Hitting our hardest before we have thought;
Trying the metal of folks and their measure,
With our good blades out of liberty wrought.
England is willing—
England, when killing
Fails and the fun, likes to judge things at leisure;
Only she must do her work her own way—
Buffet and pray.

Others their fingers
Timid and fumbling
Stretch to the prize that they gladly would steal,
Then to draw back in hot haste with a humbling;

225

England but lingers,
Over her meal.
We dropping flattery,
Run out a battery
Right to the front;
Full on the spot, where the shrapnel is shrieking
Murder and hell, lads,
Pounding them well, lads.
Such are our old island weapons and wont,
Action that wins ere the fools have left speaking.
We are for doing,
Straight without wooing,
Just what we fancy and picking the best;
Be it a banquet or plucking a pigeon,
Be it a world or a maiden's white breast.
England is in it,
England a minute
Waits not, but strikes, and that is her religion.
Yes, we are pious and proper and kneel—
Bible and steel.

Others a border
Make of their own land,
Trusting in fortress and fencing of might,
Daring not venture away from the known land;
England is order
Always, and right.
Look at her giant
Vessels reliant,
Ploughing the deep;
Carving the earth which is pliant and plastic
But to her moulding
Touch and enfolding
Arms of the iron and infinite sweep,
Growing each day yet more grim and elastic.
Force leaves its furrows
Lasting, and burrows
Down in the awful abysses of blue,
Binding above and below with a fetter
Both worlds to which it alone has the clue.

226

England uncaring, lads,
England unsparing lads,
Fashions the globe as she passes the better.
We keep our powder and bullet reply,
Ready and dry.

Others have truckled
Tamely to fortune;
These write no record to live on the main,
Though the fair breezes to triumph importune;
England was suckled
Sternly on pain.
Seas and their herring-pond
Are her unerring pond,
Curled at her feet;
Where in her glory she sails, as in blindness
Earthquakes might thunder,
Treading all under
(Foes in the path) as a native his street,
Yet with the shout of a boisterous kindness.
Here in her homely
Element comely,
Marshalling war-ships she rides on her way,
Cursing, and blessing the Lord for the beauty
Granted a Queen of imperial sway.
England, in harness, lads,
England by far ness, lads,
And at the inshore would die for her duty.
Only be sure she has, rather than think,
Worship and drink.

Others may toast lives
Pretty on paper,
Boundaries all that the feeble expects
Cut by diplomacy's elegant caper—
England such coast lines
Calmly corrects.
Laughing she nuzzles
Close to the muzzles,
Pointed by foes;

227

Here is the frontier, here is the slaughter-mark
Made by her cannon,
If but one man on
Ships that though shattered outlive the worst woes,
Here is her single acknowledged high water mark.
Winds and rough weather
Comrades together
Shake her and shape her to victory sure,
Holding the treasures and loves we adore most
And in the jaws of disaster secure.
England must win, lads,
England romps in, lads,
And with a rush ever rides out the foremost.
Give her her head, and full canvas to bear—
Searoom to swear.

A MODERN JUBILATE.

Behold, they flock with multitudinous feet,
The countries, even from earth's remotest marge,
Empires and kingdoms and democracies
And potentates and principalities,
That lay aside their jealous doubts and meet
At one broad table with the same high charge;
To honour her, whom all
Consent to crown with reverence as their own,
The sovereign of the seas,
The foremost Lady of the Land,
Who never did an action mean or small
But by her gentle charities is known,
A ready listener to the lowliest pleas
And servant of her servants' least command.
O parliament of peoples
Most visible, most vast,
A hundred towers and stately steeples
Remind you of the more heroic past;
And from the shadow of their glorious graves
Bring back the men of might
Who built this England Queen of winds and waves
Up to her goodly height.

228

It is the greatness of the undying dead
About you grandly in its splendour spread,
And under captive nations
The solid sure foundations,
That to the living
Establishes a firm and faithful pledge
Of safety, on red revolution's edge
With sheer sharp downward slopes;
And grants forgiving
In fair eternal hopes,
For judgment blindness
And calculated years of armed unkindness.
Rejoice, that England is herself and strong
For ruling yet,
And has a sceptre infinite and long
To reach the ills that God doth nigh forget;
Which is indeed His dreadful Arm and draws,
Though throned as stars in stations
Above the range of common laws,
Princes and populations
Unto that awful Will
Which brooks no rival still.
Rejoice, that England in her freedom reigns,
Serene and sole,
And carries on her head the aureole
Of destiny too large for other brows,
And sways the righteous sword
In battles for the Lord
Which weakness tries to lift but only feigns,
And keeps her plighted vows.
She stands, nor at the hour delays to strike,
Colossus-like
On sea and continent,
Dispensing round her liberties and charters
And crowns and “garters”
To those who win her favour, and the earth
In desert wastes and wilds forgets its dearth,
At her arbitrament.
Her commerce is the life-blood of the lands,
It carries with it plenitudes of wealth

229

And prophecies of health
Unknown, undreamed of at the morn
Of leaves and ragged thorn,
In better broader times to be;
And broken bands
That come with loftier works and ways
Than all our yesterdays,
And beateth out through justice and its light
The music that makes slaves erect and free,
Like noon and night;
So sure and sweet her interchange of act
And word, that as the seasons run
Obedient to the sun
And principle of God's great primal fact.
Rejoice, that England's hold
Falls on the helm
Of progress, and is pioneer of things
And guideth on by character, not gold,
Each willing realm
And vassal strength or State
By paths predestinate
And passionings,
With tournaments of truth
And friendly provocations
To fuller powers and yet more splendid youth,
By loving emulations.
Rejoice, that our big world is vaster
And comelier now for England's sake,
Which is the master,
With the imperial hand to make or break;
And, once in history, crownèd Might
Is Right.

ROYAL—LOYAL.

This is the song of the people
Made without effort or art,
Rung on the bells in the steeple,
Told by a kingdom's great heart;

230

Love of the right,
Trust in their might
Moving as one man, and bolder
Shoulder to shoulder.

This is the creed of the Loyal
Tested by famine and flood,
Faith in the heart that is royal
More than the regal in blood;
Love of the true
Glory and due,
Gained from no perishing charters
But by the martyrs.

This is the hope of the Nation
Stablished in strength like the rock,
Built upon the one foundation
Proof against shadow and shock.
Love of the Best,
Christ Manifest—
Whether in work or gun's rattle,
Both their God's battle.

ENGLAND.

England, I cannot love thee more,
And I would never love thee less;
Truth is the bulwark of thy shore,
Thy bases all are righteousness.
O, on this glory nations lean,
That lack the charters in thy hand;
And nothing common or unclean
Hath place or portion in our land,
Mother of States and parliaments,
What greater boon could country give;
That grants the isles and continents,
To breathe thy liberty and live?

Thine honour is the peoples' trust,
That in its awful shadow sleep;
And, as thou doest what thou must,

231

Thy judgments are a mighty deep.
And from the greatness of the sea
Thy pathway takes its tidal force,
And rolls its grand resistless plea
Along a predetermined course.
Thy spacious law is noonday light,
It drives out darkness and the wrong;
And, as the mountains in its might,
Stands round the kingdoms and is strong.

England, I cannot love thee more,
And I would never love thee less;
Thou bearest, what none ever bore,
The habit of sweet holiness.
For justice in thy courts doth sit,
To make their counsels broad and true;
And deals, with purpose infinite,
Alike to God and man their due.
Thou art a champion of the right,
Though this be but a lonely ledge;
And always in the van wilt fight,
For freedom and its sacred pledge.

Thy rule is peace, thy breath is power
To which all ranks and races bend;
The whole world is thy dreadful dower,
Shaped by thee to its destined end.
Thy robe is empire, and thy state
The majesty of dawning skies;
And on thy shoulder, fair as fate,
The burden of the future lies.
Dare to be greater yet, and lift
The earth on that eternal way;
For thine is heaven, and in its gift
The promise of the brighter day.