The Rhodes Memorial at Oxford The Work of Cecil Rhodes: A Sonnet-Sequence: By Theodore Watts-Dunton |
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IV
The Burial in the Granite Caves
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 | The Rhodes Memorial at Oxford |  |
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IV
The Burial in the Granite Caves
Lower the coffin while the sunlight shed
Around this craggy platform's narrow floor
Smiles on the circle of boulders, vast and hoar,
Kindling their lichen-mantles, yellow and red—
Lower the coffin to its rock-hewn bed—
Cover our wreaths with this proud flag he bore
From Orange River to the steaming shore
Where Tanganyika-waters gleam outspread.
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He loved Old England, loved her flowers, her grass,
Yea, in his dreams, he smelt her woodland smell:
Now, roll the slab above him; let the brass
On which the simple words are graven tell
Where sleeps a king whose memory shall not pass.
| The Rhodes Memorial at Oxford | |