C RANK AND FILE O UNDISTINGUISHED Dead! Whom the bent covers, or the rock-strewn steep None knows your name. Blackened and blurred in the wild battle's brunt, Hotly you fell . . . with all your wounds in front :This is your fame! Austin Dobson. CI THE FAIR BRASS AN effigy of brass Trodden by careless feet Lieth in the sombre aisle It shows a warrior arm'd: His hands by death are charmed Wherewith he led his men Would we could teach our sons His trust in face of doom, Or give our bravest ones A comparable tomb: Such as to look on shrives Yet dearer far to me, Heirs of our antique shrines, Across the deathful days, Link'd in the brotherhood That loves our country's praise, Robert Bridges. CII THE GENTLE WE come from tower and grange, Where the grey woodlands range, Folding chivalric halls in ancient ease; From Erin's rain-wet rocks, Or where the ocean-shocks Thunder between the glimmering Hebrides; With terraced riverain hoar lapped by the storied wave. Taught in proud England's school, To do and dare and bear and not to lie, Or statesman's subtle store Of garnered wisdom, proved in councils high, Leechcraft of heaven or earth We bear to scanted hearth And lightless doorway and dim beds of pain: Dusk labour's march, and cheer His blind innumerable-handed train; Or in the cannon-shaken air Frankly the gentle die that simple men may dare. The Asian moonbeams fall O'er our boys' graves, and all The o'er-watching hills are names of their young glory : Sleep the blithe swordsman hands Beside red Ethiop sands, Or drear uprise of wintry promontory: The headstone of a hero slain Charms for his Empress-Isle each threshold of her reign. O for the blood that fell So gladly given and well, O for all spirits that lived for England's honour, Ere folly ruin or fear Her whom these held so dear, Ere fate or treason shame the crown upon her, Close fast our order's ranks and guard great England whole! John Huntley Skrine. CIII THE MOTHER AND THE SONS SONS in my gates of the West, Where the long tides foam in the dark of the pine, 'Peace in thy gates of the West, In our sounding channels and headlands frore But thou, O mother, be strong In thy seas for a girdle of towers, Thine own that is ours. Till the sons that are bone of thy bone, In a day not long, Shall war for our England's own, Be strong, O mother, be strong!' Sons in my gates of the morn, That steward the measureless harvest gold 'Fair as our India's morn Thy peace, as a sunrise, is born. Where thy banner is broad in the Orient light From the Isles of the South what word? True South! long ago, when I called not, it came, And 'England's are ours' ran the war-word aflame, 'And a thousand will bleed ere the mother have shame!' From my sons of the South what word? 'Mother, what need of a word For the love that outspake with the sword? In the day of thy storm, in the clash of the powers, When thy children close round thee grown great with the hours, They shall know who have wronged thee if England's be ours.' We bring thee a deed for a word. But thou, O mother, be strong, In thy seas for a girdle of towers, Till the sons that are bone of thy bone, In a day not long, Shall war for our England's own, John Huntley Skrine. CIV ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND WHAT have I done for you, What is there I would not do, With your glorious eyes austere, Round the world on your bugles blown! |