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CIV, CV

By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. Dated severally 1857 and 1859.

CVI

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Edinburgh Courant, 1852. Compare The Loss of the Birkenhead' in The Return of the Guards, and other Poems (Macmillan, 1883), pp. 256-58. Of the troopship Birkenhead I note that she sailed from Queenstown on the 7th January 1852, with close on seven hundred souls on board; that the most of these were soldiers-of the Twelfth Lancers, the Sixtieth Rifles, the Second, Sixth, Fortythird, Forty-fifth, Seventy-third, Seventy-fourth, and Ninety-first Regiments; that she struck on a rock (26th February 1852) off Simon's Bay, South Africa; that the boats would hold no more than a hundred and thirty-eight, and that, the women and children being safe, the men that were left-four hundred and fifty-four, all told-were formed on deck by their officers, and went down with the ship, true to colours and discipline till the end.

CVII-CIX

By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. From Empedocles on Etna (1853). As regards the second number, it may be noted that Sohrab, being in quest of his father Rustum, to whom he is unknown, offers battle as one of the host of the Tartar King Afrasiab, to any champion of the Persian Kai Khosroo. The challenge is accepted by Rustum, who fights as a nameless knight (like Wilfrid of Ivanhoe at the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Ashby), and so becomes the unwitting slayer of his son. For the story of the pair the poet refers his readers to Sir John Malcom's History of Persia. See Poems, by Matthew Arnold (Macmillan), i. 268, 269.

CX, CXI

School

The Ballad

Ionica (Allen, 1891). By permission of the Author. Fencibles (1861) was 'printed, not published, in 1877. for a Boy, Mr. Cory writes, 'was never printed till this year.'

CXII

By permission of the Author. This ballad, which was suggested, Mr. Meredith tells me, by the story of Bendigeid Vran, the son of Llyr, in the Mabinogion (iii. 121-9), is reprinted from Modern Love (1862), but it originally appeared (circ. 1860) in Once a Week, a forgotten print the source of not a little unforgotten stuff-as Evan Harrington and the first part of The Cloister and the Hearth.

CXIII

From the fourth and last book of Sigurd the Volsung, 1877. By permission of the Author. Hogni and Gunnar, being the

guests of King Atli, husband to their sister Gudrun, refused to tell him the whereabouts of the treasure of Fafnir, whom Sigurd slew; and this is the manner of their taking and the beginning of King Atli's vengeance.

CXIV

English Illustrated Magazine, January 1890, and Lyrical Poems (Macmillan, 1891). By permission of the Author: with whose sanction I have omitted four lines from the last stanza.

CXV

By permission of Sir Alfred Lyall. Cornhill Magazine, September 1868, and Verses Written in India (Kegan Paul, 1889). The second title is: A Soliloquy that may have been delivered in India, June 1857; and this is further explained by the following extract from an Indian newspaper':-They would have spared life to any of their English prisoners who should consent to profess Mahometanism by repeating the usual short formula; but only one half-caste cared to save himself that way.' Then comes the description, Moriturus Loquitur, and next the poem.

CXVI-CXVIII

From Songs before Sunrise (Chatto and Windus, 1877), and the third series of Poems and Ballads (Chatto and Windus, 1889). By permission of the Author.

CXIX, CXX

The Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte (Chatto and Windus, 1886). By permission of Author and Publisher. The Reveillé was spoken before a Union Meeting at San Francisco at the beginning of the Civil War and appeared in a volume of the Author's poems in 1867. What the Bullet Sang is much later work: dating, thinks Mr. Harte, from '79 or '80.

CXXI

St. James's Magazine, October 1877, and At the Sign of the Lyre (Kegan Paul, 1889). By permission of the Author.

CXXII

St. James's Gazette, 20th July 1888, and Grass of Parnassus (Longmans, 1888). By permission of Author and Publisher. Written in memory of Gordon's betrayal and death, but while there were yet hopes and rumours of escape.

CXXIII

Underwoods (Chatto and Windus, 1886). By permission of the Publishers.

CXXIV

Love's Looking-Glass (Percival, 1891). By permission of the Author.

CXXV

Macmillan's Magazine, November 1889. By permission of the Author. Kamal Khan is a Pathan; and the scene of this exploit -which, I am told, is perfectly consonant with the history and tradition of Guides and Pathans both-is the North Frontier country in the Peshawar-Kohat region, say, between Abazai and Bonair, behind which is stationed the Punjab Irregular Frontier Force'the steel head of the lance couched for the defence of India.' As for the Queen's Own Corps of Guides, to the general 'God's Own Guides (from its exclusiveness and gallantry), it comprehends both horse and foot, is recruited from Sikhs, Pathans, Rajputs, Afghans, all the fighting races, is officered both by natives and by Englishmen, and in all respects is worthy of this admirable ballad.

Ressaldar = the native leader of a ressala or troop of horse
Tongue a barren and naked strath—' what geologists call a fan '
Gut of the Tongue = the narrowest part of the strath
dust-devils dust-clouds blown by a whirlwind

=

CXXVI

National Observer, 4th April 1891. At the burning of the CourtHouse at Cork, Above the portico a flagstaff bearing the Union Jack remained fluttering in the air for some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.'-DAILY PAPERS. Author's Note.

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And Rustum gazed in Sohrab's face, and said
Arm, arm, arm, arm! the scouts are all come in
As I was walking all alane

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At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay.
Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's
praise

Attend you, and give ear awhile

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Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
A wet sheet and a flowing sea

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Beat! beat! drums!-blow! bugles! blow!

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Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in Arms
Come, all ye jolly sailors bold

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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine

Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud.

Darkly, sternly, and all alone

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England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate

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Get up! get up for shame! The blooming morn
God prosper long our noble king.

God who created me

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine

Good Lord Scroope to the hills is gane

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Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be
Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands
He has called him forty Marchmen bold
Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling
He spoke, and as he ceased he wept aloud
He spoke, and Sohrab kindled at his taunts
He spoke; but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood
High-spirited friend

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How happy is he born or taught

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I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken

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