RUKSH THE HORSE

He spoke; but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood Speechless; and then he uttered one sharp cry: O boy—thy father!—and his voice choked there. And then a dark cloud passed before his eyes, And his head swam, and he sank down to earth. But Sohrab crawled to where he lay, and cast His arms about his neck, and kissed his lips, And with fond faltering fingers stroked his cheeks, Trying to call him back to life; and life Came back to Rustum, and he oped his eyes, And they stood wide with horror; and he seized In both his hands the dust which lay around, And threw it on his head, and smirched his hair,— His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms; And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast, And his sobs choked him; and he clutched his sword, To draw it, and for ever let life out. But Sohrab saw his thought, and held his hands, And with a soothing voice he spake, and said: 'Father, forbear! for I but meet to-day The doom which at my birth was written down In Heaven, and thou art Heaven's unconscious hand. Surely my heart cried out that it was thou, When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too, I know it! but fate trod these promptings down Under its iron heel; fate, fate engaged The strife, and hurled me on my father's spear. But let us speak no more of this! I find My father; let me feel that I have found! Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks, And wash them with thy tears, and say: My son! Quick! quick! for numbered are my sands of life, And swift; for like the lightning to this field I came, and like the wind I go away— Sudden, and swift, and like a passing wind. But it was writ in Heaven that this should be.' So said he, and his voice released the heart Of Rustum and his tears broke forth; he cast His arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud, And kissed him. And awe fell on both the hosts, When they saw Rustum's grief; and Ruksh the horse, With his head bowing to the ground and mane Sweeping the dust, came near, and in mute woe First to the one, then to the other moved His head, as if inquiring what their grief Might mean; and from his dark, compassionate eyes, The big warm tears rolled down, and caked the sand. But Rustum chid him with stern voice, and said:— 'Ruksh, now thou grievest; but, O Ruksh, thy feet Should first have rotted on their nimble joints, Or ere they brought thy master to this field!' But Sohrab looked upon the horse and said: 'Is this, then, Ruksh? How often in past days, My mother told me of thee, thou brave steed, My terrible father's terrible horse! and said, That I should one day find thy lord and thee. Come, let me lay my hand upon thy mane! O Ruksh, thou art more fortunate than I; For thou hast gone where I shall never go, And snuffed the breezes of my father's home. And thou hast trod the sands of Seistan, And seen the river of Helmund, and the Lake Of Zirrah; and the aged Zal himself Has often stroked thy neck, and given thee food, Corn in a golden platter soaked with wine, And said: O Ruksh! bear Rustum well!—but I Have never known my grandsire's furrowed face, Nor seen his lofty house in Seistan, Nor slaked my thirst at the clear Helmund stream; But lodged among my father's foes, and seen Afrasiab's cities only, Samarcand, Bokhara, and lone Khiva in the waste, And the black Toorkman tents; and only drunk The desert rivers, Moorghab and Tejend, Kohik, and where the Kalmuks feed their sheep, The northern Sir; and this great Oxus stream, The yellow Oxus, by whose brink I die.'

RUSTUM

Then with a heavy groan, Rustum bewailed: 'O that its waves were flowing over me! O that I saw its grains of yellow silt Roll tumbling in the current o'er my head!' But with a grave mild voice, Sohrab replied:— 'Desire not that, my father! thou must live. For some are born to do great deeds, and live, As some are born to be obscured, and die. Do thou the deeds I die too young to do, And reap a second glory in thine age; Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine. But come! thou seest this great host of men Which follow me; I pray thee, slay not these! Let me entreat for them; what have they done? They followed me, my hope, my fame, my star. Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace. But me thou must bear hence, not send with them, But carry me with thee to Seistan, And place me on a bed, and mourn for me, Thou, and the snow-haired Zal, and all thy friends. And thou must lay me in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above my bones, And plant a far-seen pillar over all. That so the passing horseman on the waste May see my tomb a great way off, and cry; Sohrab, the mighty Rustum's son, lies here, Whom his great father did in ignorance kill! And I be not forgotten in my grave.' And, with a mournful voice, Rustum replied: 'Fear not! as thou hast said, Sohrab, my son, So shall it be; for I will burn my tents, And quit the host, and bear thee hence with me, And carry thee away to Seistan, And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee, With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends. And I will lay thee in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above thy bones, And plant a far-seen pillar over all, And men shall not forget thee in thy grave. And I will spare thy host; yea, let them go! Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace! What should I do with slaying any more? For would that all whom I have ever slain Might be once more alive—my bitterest foes, And they who were called champions in their time, And through whose death I won that fame I have— And I were nothing but a common man, A poor, mean soldier, and without renown, So thou mightest live too, my son, my son! Or rather would that I, even I myself, Might now be lying on this bloody sand, Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine, Not thou of mine! and I might die, not thou; And I, not thou, be borne to Seistan; And Zal might weep above my grave, not thine; And say: O Son, I weep thee not too sore, For willingly, I know, thou met'st thine end! But now in blood and battles was my youth, And full of blood and battles is my age, And I shall never end this life of blood.' Then at the point of death, Sohrab replied: 'A life of blood indeed, thou dreadful man! But thou shalt yet have peace; only not now, Not yet! but thou shalt have it on that day, When thou shalt sail in a high-masted ship, Thou and the other peers of Kai Khosroo Returning home over the salt blue sea, From laying thy dear master in his grave.'

NIGHT

And Rustum gazed in Sohrab's face, and said: 'Soon be that day, my son, and deep that sea! Till then, if fate so wills, let me endure.' He spoke; and Sohrab smiled on him, and took The spear, and drew it from his side, and eased His wound's imperious anguish; but the blood Came welling from the open gash, and life Flowed with the stream;—all down his cold white side The crimson torrent ran, dim now and soiled, Like the soiled tissue of white violets Left, freshly gathered, on their native bank, By children whom their nurses call with haste Indoors from the sun's eye; his head dropped low, His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay— White, with eyes closed; only when heavy gasps, Deep heavy gasps quivering through all his frame, Convulsed him back to life, he opened them, And fixed them feebly on his father's face; Till now all strength was ebbed, and from his limbs Unwillingly the spirit fled away, Regretting the warm mansion which it left, And youth, and bloom, and this delightful world. So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead; And the great Rustum drew his horseman's cloak Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars once high-reared By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear His house, now 'mid their broken flights of steps Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side, So in the sand lay Rustum by his son. And night came down over the solemn waste, And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair, And darkened all; and a cold fog, with night, Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose, As of a great assembly loosed, and fires Began to twinkle through the fog; for now Both armies moved to camp, and took their meal; The Persians took it on the open sands Southward, the Tartars by the river marge; And Rustum and his son were left alone. But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon;—he flowed Right for the polar star, past Orgunje, Brimming, and bright, and large; then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles— Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere A foiled circuitous wanderer—till at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.

Arnold.



CIX

FLEE FRO' THE PRESS

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife— Fly hence, our contact fear! Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Wave us away and keep thy solitude!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free, onward impulse brushing through, By night, the silvered branches of the glade— Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, On some mild pastoral slope Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales Freshen thy flowers as in former years With dew, or listen with enchanted ears, From the dark dingles, to the nightingales!

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! For strong the infection of our mental strife, Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; And we should win thee from thy own fair life, Like us distracted, and like us unblest. Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, Descried at sunrise an emerging prow Lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily, The fringes of a southward-facing brow Among the AEgaean isles; And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine— And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young light-hearted masters of the waves— And snatched his rudder, and shook out more sail; And day and night held on indignantly O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, To where the Atlantic raves Outside the western straits; and unbent sails There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; And on the beach undid his corded bales.

Arnold.



CX

SCHOOL FENCIBLES

We come in arms, we stand ten score, Embattled on the castle green; We grasp our firelocks tight, for war Is threatening, and we see our Queen. And 'Will the churls last out till we Have duly hardened bones and thews For scouring leagues of swamp and sea Of braggart mobs and corsair crews?' We ask; we fear not scoff or smile At meek attire of blue and grey, For the proud wrath that thrills our isle Gives faith and force to this array. So great a charm is England's right, That hearts enlarged together flow, And each man rises up a knight To work the evil-thinkers woe. And, girt with ancient truth and grace, We do our service and our suit, And each can be, whate'er his race, A Chandos or a Montacute. Thou, Mistress, whom we serve to-day, Bless the real swords that we shall wield, Repeat the call we now obey In sunset lands, on some fair field. Thy flag shall make some Huron rock As dear to us as Windsor's keep, And arms thy Thames hath nerved shall mock The surgings of th' Ontarian deep. The stately music of thy Guards, Which times our march beneath thy ken, Shall sound, with spells of sacred bards, From heart to heart, when we are men. And when we bleed on alien earth, We'll call to mind how cheers of ours Proclaimed a loud uncourtly mirth Amongst thy glowing orange bowers. And if for England's sake we fall, So be it, so thy cross be won, Fixed by kind hands on silvered pall, And worn in death, for duty done. Ah! thus we fondle Death, the soldier's mate, Blending his image with the hopes of youth To hallow all; meanwhile the hidden fate Chills not our fancies with the iron truth. Death from afar we call, and Death is here, To choose out him who wears the loftiest mien; And Grief, the cruel lord who knows no peer, Breaks through the shield of love to pierce our Queen.

Cory.



CXI

THE TWO CAPTAINS

When George the Third was reigning a hundred years ago, He ordered Captain Farmer to chase the foreign foe. 'You're not afraid of shot,' said he, 'you're not afraid of wreck, So cruise about the west of France in the frigate called Quebec.

Quebec was once a Frenchman's town, but twenty years ago King George the Second sent a man called General Wolfe, you know, To clamber up a precipice and look into Quebec, As you'd look down a hatchway when standing on the deck.

If Wolfe could beat the Frenchmen then so you can beat them now. Before he got inside the town he died, I must allow. But since the town was won for us it is a lucky name, And you'll remember Wolfe's good work, and you shall do the same.'

Then Farmer said, 'I'll try, sir,' and Farmer bowed so low That George could see his pigtail tied in a velvet bow. George gave him his commission, and that it might be safer, Signed 'King of Britain, King of France,' and sealed it with a wafer.

Then proud was Captain Farmer in a frigate of his own, And grander on his quarter-deck than George upon the throne. He'd two guns in his cabin, and on the spar-deck ten, And twenty on the gun-deck, and more than ten score men.

And as a huntsman scours the brakes with sixteen brace of dogs, With two-and-thirty cannon the ship explored the fogs. From Cape la Hogue to Ushant, from Rochefort to Belleisle, She hunted game till reef and mud were rubbing on her keel.

The fogs are dried, the frigate's side is bright with melting tar, The lad up in the foretop sees square white sails afar; The east wind drives three square-sailed masts from out the Breton bay, And 'Clear for action!' Farmer shouts, and reefers yell 'Hooray!'

The Frenchman's captain had a name I wish I could pronounce; A Breton gentleman was he, and wholly free from bounce, One like those famous fellows who died by guillotine For honour and the fleurs-de-lys and Antoinette the Queen.

The Catholic for Louis, the Protestant for George, Each captain drew as bright a sword as saintly smiths could forge; And both were simple seamen, but both could understand How each was bound to win or die for flag and native land.

The French ship was la Surveillante, which means the watchful maid; She folded up her head-dress and began to cannonade. Her hull was clean, and ours was foul; we had to spread more sail. On canvas, stays, and topsail yards her bullets came like hail.

Sore smitten were both captains, and many lads beside, And still to cut our rigging the foreign gunners tried. A sail-clad spar came flapping down athwart a blazing gun; We could not quench the rushing flames, and so the Frenchman won.

Our quarter-deck was crowded, the waist was all aglow; Men hung upon the taffrail half scorched, but loth to go; Our captain sat where once he stood, and would not quit his chair. He bade his comrades leap for life, and leave him bleeding there.

The guns were hushed on either side, the Frenchmen lowered boats, They flung us planks and hencoops, and everything that floats. They risked their lives, good fellows! to bring their rivals aid. 'Twas by the conflagration the peace was strangely made.

La Surveillante was like a sieve; the victors had no rest, They had to dodge the east wind to reach the port of Brest, And where the waves leapt lower, and the riddled ship went slower, In triumph, yet in funeral guise, came fisher-boats to tow her.

They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead; And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head. Then spoke the French Lieutenant, ''Twas fire that won, not we. You never struck your flag to us; you'll go to England free.'

'Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine, A year when nations ventured against us to combine, Quebec was burnt and Farmer slain, by us remembered not; But thanks be to the French book wherein they're not forgot.

Now you, if you've to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind; Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest, And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest.

Cory.



CXII

THE HEAD OF BRAN

When the head of Bran Was firm on British shoulders, God made a man! Cried all beholders.

Steel could not resist The weight his arm would rattle; He with naked fist Has brained a knight in battle.

He marched on the foe, And never counted numbers; Foreign widows know The hosts he sent to slumbers.

As a street you scan That's towered by the steeple, So the head of Bran Rose o'er his people.

'Death's my neighbour,' Quoth Bran the blest; 'Christian labour Brings Christian rest. From the trunk sever The head of Bran, That which never Has bent to man!

That which never To men has bowed Shall live ever To shame the shroud: Shall live ever To face the foe; Sever it, sever, And with one blow.

Be it written, That all I wrought Was for Britain, In deed and thought: Be it written, That, while I die, "Glory to Britain!" Is my last cry.

"Glory to Britain!" Death echoes me round. Glory to Britain! The world shall resound. Glory to Britain! In ruin and fall, Glory to Britain! Is heard over all.'

Burn, Sun, down the sea! Bran lies low with thee.

Burst, Morn, from the main! Bran so shall rise again.

Blow, Wind, from the field! Bran's Head is the Briton's shield.

Beam, Star, in the west! Bright burns the Head of Bran the Blest.

Crimson-footed like the stork, From great ruts of slaughter, Warriors of the Golden Torque Cross the lifting water. Princes seven, enchaining hands, Bear the live Head homeward. Lo! it speaks, and still commands; Gazing far out foamward.

Fiery words of lightning sense Down the hollows thunder; Forest hostels know not whence Comes the speech, and wonder. City-castles, on the steep Where the faithful Severn House at midnight, hear in sleep Laughter under heaven.

Lilies, swimming on the mere, In the castle shadow, Under draw their heads, and Fear Walks the misty meadow; Tremble not, it is not Death Pledging dark espousal: 'Tis the Head of endless breath, Challenging carousal!

Brim the horn! a health is drunk, Now, that shall keep going: Life is but the pebble sunk, Deeds, the circle growing! Fill, and pledge the Head of Bran! While his lead they follow, Long shall heads in Britain plan Speech Death cannot swallow.

George Meredith.



CXIII

THE SLAYING OF THE NIBLUNGS

HOGNI

Ye shall know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the house Were many carven doorways whose work was glorious With marble stones and gold-work, and their doors of beaten brass: Lo now, in the merry morning how the story cometh to pass! —While the echoes of the trumpet yet fill the people's ears, And Hogni casts by the war-horn, and his Dwarf-wrought sword uprears, All those doors aforesaid open, and in pour the streams of steel, The best of the Eastland champions, the bold men of Atli's weal: They raise no cry of battle nor cast forth threat of woe, And their helmed and hidden faces from each other none may know: Then a light in the hall ariseth, and the fire of battle runs All adown the front of the Niblungs in the face of the mighty ones; All eyes are set upon them, hard drawn is every breath, Ere the foremost points be mingled and death be blent with death. —All eyes save the eyes of Hogni; but e'en as the edges meet, He turneth about for a moment to the gold of the kingly seat, Then aback to the front of battle; there then, as the lightning-flash Through the dark night showeth the city when the clouds of heaven clash, And the gazer shrinketh backward, yet he seeth from end to end The street and the merry market, and the windows of his friend, And the pavement where his footsteps yester'en returning trod, Now white and changed and dreadful 'neath the threatening voice of God; So Hogni seeth Gudrun, and the face he used to know, Unspeakable, unchanging, with white unknitted brow With half-closed lips untrembling, with deedless hands and cold Laid still on knees that stir not, and the linen's moveless fold.

Turned Hogni unto the spear-wall, and smote from where he stood, And hewed with his sword two-handed as the axe-man in a wood: Before his sword was a champion, and the edges clave to the chin, And the first man fell in the feast-hall of those that should fall therein. Then man with man was dealing, and the Niblung host of war Was swept by the leaping iron, as the rock anigh the shore By the ice-cold waves of winter: yet a moment Gunnar stayed As high in his hand unblooded he shook his awful blade; And he cried: 'O Eastland champions, do ye behold it here, The sword of the ancient Giuki? Fall on and have no fear, But slay and be slain and be famous, if your master's will it be! Yet are we the blameless Niblungs, and bidden guests are we: So forbear, if ye wander hood-winked, nor for nothing slay and be slain; For I know not what to tell you of the dead that live again.'

So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high, But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel Behind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo! have ye seen the corn, While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind-streak overborne When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black, And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder-wrack? So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the East, As his great voice shook the timbers in the hall of Atli's feast. There he smote, and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his edges stopped; He smote, and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield he lopped; There met him Atli's marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he shred; Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of the dead; And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a throat he thrust, But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, and he stooped to the ruddy dust, And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet: Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labour he set; Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and fell, Harsh grided shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell, And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew, And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood through; And man 'gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite, And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight, And there ran a river of death 'twixt the Niblung and his foes, And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods arose.

GUNNAR

Now fell the sword of Gunnar, and rose up red in the air, And hearkened the song of the Niblung, as his voice rang glad and clear, And rejoiced and leapt at the Eastmen, and cried as it met the rings Of a Giant of King Atli and a murder-wolf of kings; But it quenched its thirst in his entrails, and knew the heart in his breast, And hearkened the praise of Gunnar, and lingered not to rest, But fell upon Atli's brother, and stayed not in his brain; Then he fell, and the King leapt over, and clave a neck atwain, And leapt o'er the sweep of a pole-axe, and thrust a lord in the throat, And King Atli's banner-bearer through shield and hauberk smote; Then he laughed on the huddled East-folk, and against their war-shields drave While the white swords tossed about him, and that archer's skull he clave Whom Atli had bought in the Southlands for many a pound of gold; And the dark-skinned fell upon Gunnar, and over his war-shield rolled, And cumbered his sword for a season, and the many blades fell on, And sheared the cloudy helm-crest and rents in his hauberk won, And the red blood ran from Gunnar; till that Giuki's sword outburst, As the fire-tongue from the smoulder that the leafy heap hath nursed, And unshielded smote King Gunnar, and sent the Niblung song Through the quaking stems of battle in the hall of Atli's wrong: Then he rent the knitted war-hedge till by Hogni's side he stood, And kissed him amidst of the spear-hail, and their cheeks were wet with blood.

Then on came the Niblung bucklers, and they drave the East-folk home, As the bows of the oar-driven long-ship beat off the waves in foam: They leave their dead behind them, and they come to the doors and the wall, And a few last spears from the fleeing amidst their shield-hedge fall: But the doors clash to in their faces, as the fleeing rout they drive, And fain would follow after; and none is left alive In the feast-hall of King Atli, save those fishes of the net, And the white and silent woman above the slaughter set.

Then biddeth the heart-wise Hogni, and men to the windows climb, And uplift the war-grey corpses, dead drift of the stormy time, And cast them adown to their people: thence they come aback and say That scarce shall ye see the houses, and no whit the wheel-worn way For the spears and shields of the Eastlands that the merchant city throng; And back to the Niblung burg-gate the way seemed weary-long.

Yet passeth hour on hour, and the doors they watch and ward But a long while hear no mail-clash, nor the ringing of the sword; Then droop the Niblung children, and their wounds are waxen chill, And they think of the burg by the river, and the builded holy hill, And their eyes are set on Gudrun as of men who would beseech; But unlearned are they in craving, and know not dastard's speech. Then doth Giuki's first-begotten a deed most fair to be told, For his fair harp Gunnar taketh, and the warp of silver and gold; With the hand of a cunning harper he dealeth with the strings, And his voice in their midst goeth upward, as of ancient days he sings, Of the days before the Niblungs, and the days that shall be yet; Till the hour of toil and smiting the warrior hearts forget, Nor hear the gathering foemen, nor the sound of swords aloof: Then clear the song of Gunnar goes up to the dusky roof, And the coming spear-host tarries, and the bearers of the woe Through the cloisters of King Atli with lingering footsteps go.

But Hogni looketh on Gudrun, and no change in her face he sees, And no stir in her folded linen and the deedless hands on her knees: Then from Gunnar's side he hasteneth; and lo! the open door, And a foeman treadeth the pavement, and his lips are on Atli's floor, For Hogni is death in the doorway: then the Niblungs turn on the foe, And the hosts are mingled together, and blow cries out on blow.

GUDRUN

Still the song goeth up from Gunnar, though his harp to earth be laid; But he fighteth exceeding wisely, and is many a warrior's aid, And he shieldeth and delivereth, and his eyes search through the hall, And woe is he for his fellows, as his battle-brethren fall; For the turmoil hideth little from that glorious folk-king's eyes, And o'er all he beholdeth Gudrun, and his soul is waxen wise, And he saith: 'We shall look on Sigurd, and Sigmund of old days, And see the boughs of the Branstock o'er the ancient Volsung's praise.'

Woe's me for the wrath of Hogni! From the door he giveth aback That the Eastland slayers may enter to the murder and the wrack: Then he rageth and driveth the battle to the golden kingly seat, And the last of the foes he slayeth by Gudrun's very feet, That the red blood splasheth her raiment; and his own blood therewithal He casteth aloft before her, and the drops on her white hands fall: But nought she seeth or heedeth, and again he turns to fight, Nor heedeth stroke nor wounding so he a foe may smite: Then the battle opens before him, and the Niblungs draw to his side; As death in the world first fashioned, through the feast-hall doth he stride. And so once more do the Niblungs sweep that murder-flood of men From the hall of toils and treason, and the doors swing to again. Then again is there peace for a little within the fateful fold; But the Niblungs look about them, and but few folk they behold Upright on their feet for the battle: now they climb aloft no more, Nor cast the dead from the windows; but they raise a rampart of war, And its stones are the fallen East-folk, and no lowly wall is that.

Therein was Gunnar the mighty: on the shields of men he sat, And the sons of his people hearkened, for his hand through the harp-strings ran, And he sang in the hall of his foeman of the Gods and the making of man, And how season was sundered from season in the days of the fashioning, And became the Summer and Autumn, and became the Winter and Spring; He sang of men's hunger and labour, and their love and their breeding of broil. And their hope that is fostered of famine, and their rest that is fashioned of toil: Fame then and the sword he sang of, and the hour of the hardy and wise, When the last of the living shall perish, and the first of the dead shall arise, And the torch shall be lit in the daylight, and God unto man shall pray, And the heart shall cry out for the hand in the fight of the uttermost day. So he sang, and beheld not Gudrun, save as long ago he saw His sister, the little maiden of the face without a flaw: But wearily Hogni beheld her, and no change in her face there was, And long thereon gazed Hogni, and set his brows as the brass, Though the hands of the King were weary, and weak his knees were grown, And he felt as a man unholpen in a waste land wending alone.

THE SONS OF GIUKI

Now the noon was long passed over when again the rumour arose, And through the doors cast open flowed in the river of foes: They flooded the hall of the murder, and surged round that rampart of dead; No war-duke ran before them, no lord to the onset led, But the thralls shot spears at adventure, and shot out shafts from afar, Till the misty hall was blinded with the bitter drift of war: Few and faint were the Niblung children, and their wounds were waxen acold, And they saw the Hell-gates open as they stood in their grimly hold: Yet thrice stormed out King Hogni, thrice stormed out Gunnar the King, Thrice fell they aback yet living to the heart of the fated ring; And they looked and their band was little, and no man but was wounded sore, And the hall seemed growing greater, such hosts of foes it bore, So tossed the iron harvest from wall to gilded wall; And they looked and the white-clad Gudrun sat silent over all.

Then the churls and thralls of the Eastland howled out as wolves accurst, But oft gaped the Niblungs voiceless, for they choked with anger and thirst; And the hall grew hot as a furnace, and men drank their flowing blood, Men laughed and gnawed on their shield-rims, men knew not where they stood, And saw not what was before them; as in the dark men smote, Men died heart-broken, unsmitten; men wept with the cry in the throat, Men lived on full of war-shafts, men cast their shields aside And caught the spears to their bosoms; men rushed with none beside, And fell unarmed on the foemen, and tore and slew in death: And still down rained the arrows as the rain across the heath; Still proud o'er all the turmoil stood the Kings of Giuki born, Nor knit were the brows of Gunnar, nor his song-speech overworn; But Hogni's mouth kept silence, and oft his heart went forth To the long, long day of the darkness, and the end of worldly worth.

Loud rose the roar of the East-folk, and the end was coming at last: Now the foremost locked their shield-rims and the hindmost over them cast, And nigher they drew and nigher, and their fear was fading away, For every man of the Niblungs on the shaft-strewn pavement lay, Save Gunnar the King and Hogni: still the glorious King up-bore The cloudy shield of the Niblungs set full of shafts of war; But Hogni's hands had fainted, and his shield had sunk adown, So thick with the Eastland spearwood was that rampart of renown; And hacked and dull were the edges that had rent the wall of foes: Yet he stood upright by Gunnar before that shielded close, Nor looked on the foeman's faces as their wild eyes drew anear, And their faltering shield-rims clattered with the remnant of their fear; But he gazed on the Niblung woman, and the daughter of his folk, Who sat o'er all unchanging ere the war-cloud over them broke.

Now nothing might men hearken in the house of Atli's weal, Save the feet slow tramping onward, and the rattling of the steel, And the song of the glorious Gunnar, that rang as clearly now As the speckled storm-cock singeth from the scant-leaved hawthorn-bough, When the sun is dusking over and the March snow pelts the land. There stood the mighty Gunnar with sword and shield in hand, There stood the shieldless Hogni with set unangry eyes, And watched the wall of war-shields o'er the dead men's rampart rise, And the white blades flickering nigher, and the quavering points of war. Then the heavy air of the feast-hall was rent with a fearful roar, And the turmoil came and the tangle, as the wall together ran: But aloft yet towered the Niblungs, and man toppled over man, And leapt and struggled to tear them; as whiles amidst the sea The doomed ship strives its utmost with mid-ocean's mastery, And the tall masts whip the cordage, while the welter whirls and leaps, And they rise and reel and waver, and sink amid the deeps: So before the little-hearted in King Atli's murder-hall Did the glorious sons of Giuki 'neath the shielded onrush fall: Sore wounded, bound and helpless, but living yet, they lie Till the afternoon and the even in the first of night shall die.

William Morris.



CXIV

IS LIFE WORTH LIVING

Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here; So long as May of April takes, In smiles and tears, farewell, And windflowers dapple all the brakes, And primroses the dell; While children in the woodlands yet Adorn their little laps With ladysmock and violet, And daisy-chain their caps; While over orchard daffodils Cloud-shadows float and fleet, And ousel pipes and laverock trills, And young lambs buck and bleat; So long as that which bursts the bud And swells and tunes the rill Makes springtime in the maiden's blood, Life is worth living still.

Life not worth living! Come with me, Now that, through vanishing veil, Shimmers the dew on lawn and lea, And milk foams in the pail; Now that June's sweltering sunlight bathes With sweat the striplings lithe, As fall the long straight scented swathes Over the crescent scythe; Now that the throstle never stops His self-sufficing strain, And woodbine-trails festoon the copse, And eglantine the lane; Now rustic labour seems as sweet As leisure, and blithe herds Wend homeward with unweary feet, Carolling like the birds; Now all, except the lover's vow, And nightingale, is still; Here, in the twilight hour, allow, Life is worth living still.

When Summer, lingering half-forlorn, On Autumn loves to lean, And fields of slowly yellowing corn Are girt by woods still green; When hazel-nuts wax brown and plump, And apples rosy-red, And the owlet hoots from hollow stump, And the dormouse makes its bed; When crammed are all the granary floors, And the Hunter's moon is bright, And life again is sweet indoors, And logs again alight; Ay, even when the houseless wind Waileth through cleft and chink, And in the twilight maids grow kind, And jugs are filled and clink; When children clasp their hands and pray 'Be done Thy Heavenly will!' Who doth not lift his voice, and say, 'Life is worth living still'?

Is life worth living? Yes, so long As there is wrong to right, Wail of the weak against the strong, Or tyranny to fight; Long as there lingers gloom to chase, Or streaming tear to dry, One kindred woe, one sorrowing face That smiles as we draw nigh; Long as at tale of anguish swells The heart, and lids grow wet, And at the sound of Christmas bells We pardon and forget; So long as Faith with Freedom reigns, And loyal Hope survives, And gracious Charity remains To leaven lowly lives; While there is one untrodden tract For Intellect or Will, And men are free to think and act Life is worth living still.

Not care to live while English homes Nestle in English trees, And England's Trident-Sceptre roams Her territorial seas! Not live while English songs are sung Wherever blows the wind, And England's laws and England's tongue Enfranchise half mankind! So long as in Pacific main, Or on Atlantic strand, Our kin transmit the parent strain, And love the Mother-land; So long as flashes English steel, And English trumpets shrill, He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.

Austin.



CXV

THEOLOGY IN EXTREMIS

Oft in the pleasant summer years, Reading the tales of days bygone, I have mused on the story of human tears, All that man unto man has done, Massacre, torture, and black despair; Reading it all in my easy-chair.

Passionate prayer for a minute's life; Tortured crying for death as rest; Husband pleading for child or wife, Pitiless stroke upon tender breast. Was it all real as that I lay there Lazily stretched on my easy-chair?

Could I believe in those hard old times, Here in this safe luxurious age? Were the horrors invented to season rhymes, Or truly is man so fierce in his rage? What could I suffer, and what could I dare? I who was bred to that easy-chair.

They were my fathers, the men of yore, Little they recked of a cruel death; They would dip their hands in a heretic's gore, They stood and burnt for a rule of faith. What would I burn for, and whom not spare? I, who had faith in an easy-chair.

Now do I see old tales are true, Here in the clutch of a savage foe; Now shall I know what my fathers knew, Bodily anguish and bitter woe, Naked and bound in the strong sun's glare, Far from my civilised easy-chair.

Now have I tasted and understood That old-world feeling of mortal hate; For the eyes all round us are hot with blood; They will kill us coolly—they do but wait; While I, I would sell ten lives, at least, For one fair stroke at that devilish priest.

Just in return for the kick he gave, Bidding me call on the prophet's name; Even a dog by this may save Skin from the knife and soul from the flame; My soul! if he can let the prophet burn it, But life is sweet if a word may earn it.

A bullock's death, and at thirty years! Just one phrase, and a man gets off it; Look at that mongrel clerk in his tears Whining aloud the name of the prophet; Only a formula easy to patter, And, God Almighty, what can it matter?

'Matter enough,' will my comrade say Praying aloud here close at my side, 'Whether you mourn in despair alway, Cursed for ever by Christ denied; Or whether you suffer a minute's pain All the reward of Heaven to gain.'

Not for a moment faltereth he, Sure of the promise and pardon of sin; Thus did the martyrs die, I see, Little to lose and muckle to win; Death means Heaven, he longs to receive it, But what shall I do if I don't believe it?

Life is pleasant, and friends may be nigh, Fain would I speak one word and be spared; Yet I could be silent and cheerfully die, If I were only sure God cared; If I had faith, and were only certain That light is behind that terrible curtain.

But what if He listeth nothing at all, Of words a poor wretch in his terror may say That mighty God who created all To labour and live their appointed day; Who stoops not either to bless or ban, Weaving the woof of an endless plan.

He is the Reaper, and binds the sheaf, Shall not the season its order keep? Can it be changed by a man's belief? Millions of harvests still to reap; Will God reward, if I die for a creed, Or will He but pity, and sow more seed?

Surely He pities who made the brain, When breaks that mirror of memories sweet, When the hard blow falleth, and never again Nerve shall quiver nor pulse shall beat; Bitter the vision of vanishing joys; Surely He pities when man destroys.

Here stand I on the ocean's brink, Who hath brought news of the further shore? How shall I cross it? Sail or sink, One thing is sure, I return no more; Shall I find haven, or aye shall I be Tossed in the depths of a shoreless sea?

They tell fair tales of a far-off land, Of love rekindled, of forms renewed; There may I only touch one hand Here life's ruin will little be rued; But the hand I have pressed and the voice I have heard, To lose them for ever, and all for a word!

Now do I feel that my heart must break All for one glimpse of a woman's face; Swiftly the slumbering memories wake Odour and shadow of hour and place; One bright ray through the darkening past Leaps from the lamp as it brightens last,

Showing me summer in western land Now, as the cool breeze murmureth In leaf and flower—And here I stand In this plain all bare save the shadow of death; Leaving my life in its full noonday, And no one to know why I flung it away.

Why? Am I bidding for glory's roll? I shall be murdered and clean forgot; Is it a bargain to save my soul? God, whom I trust in, bargains not; Yet for the honour of English race, May I not live or endure disgrace.

Ay, but the word, if I could have said it, I by no terrors of hell perplext; Hard to be silent and have no credit From man in this world, or reward in the next; None to bear witness and reckon the cost Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost.

I must be gone to the crowd untold Of men by the cause which they served unknown, Who moulder in myriad graves of old; Never a story and never a stone Tells of the martyrs who die like me, Just for the pride of the old countree.

Lyall.



CXVI

THE OBLATION

Ask nothing more of me, sweet; All I can give you I give. Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet: Love that should help you to live, Song that should spur you to soar.

All things were nothing to give Once to have sense of you more, Touch you and taste of you, sweet, Think you and breathe you and live, Swept of your wings as they soar, Trodden by chance of your feet.

I that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet: He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live.

Swinburne.



CXVII

ENGLAND

England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round, Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found? Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims thee crowned. Time may change, and the skies grow strange with signs of treason, and fraud, and fear: Foes in union of strange communion may rise against thee from far and near: Sloth and greed on thy strength may feed as cankers waxing from year to year.

Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and defame and smite, We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the sons of night, We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of life in light.

Life that shines from thee shows forth signs that none may read not by eyeless foes: Hate, born blind, in his abject mind grows hopeful now but as madness grows: Love, born wise, with exultant eyes adores thy glory, beholds and glows. Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the face of truth: Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy deathless youth: Faith should fail, and the world turn pale, wert thou the prey of the serpent's tooth.

Greed and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the strength of Spain.

Mother, mother beloved, none other could claim in place of thee England's place: Earth bears none that beholds the sun so pure of record, so clothed with grace: Dear our mother, nor son nor brother is thine, as strong or as fair of face, How shalt thou be abased? or how shalt fear take hold of thy heart? of thine, England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with hopes divine? Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in her darkness shine.

England, none that is born thy son, and lives by grace of thy glory, free, Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he worships thee; None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our songs as it hails the sea.

Swinburne.



CXVIII

A JACOBITE IN EXILE

The weary day rins down and dies, The weary night wears through: And never an hour is fair wi' flower, And never a flower wi' dew.

I would the day were night for me, I would the night were day: For then would I stand in my ain fair land, As now in dreams I may.

O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, And loud the dark Durance: But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne Than a' the fields of France; And the waves of Till that speak sae still Gleam goodlier where they glance.

O weel were they that fell fighting On dark Drumossie's day: They keep their hame ayont the faem And we die far away.

O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep, But night and day wake we; And ever between the sea banks green Sounds loud the sundering sea.

And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep But sweet and fast sleep they: And the mool that haps them roun' and laps them Is e'en their country's clay; But the land we tread that are not dead Is strange as night by day.

Strange as night in a strange man's sight, Though fair as dawn it be: For what is here that a stranger's cheer Should yet wax blithe to see?

The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep, The fields are green and gold: The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring, As ours at home of old.

But hills and flowers are nane of ours, And ours are over sea: And the kind strange land whereon we stand, It wotsna what were we Or ever we came, wi' scathe and shame, To try what end might be.

Scathe and shame, and a waefu' name, And a weary time and strange, Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing Can die, and cannot change.

Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn, Though sair be they to dree: But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide, Mair keen than wind and sea.

Ill may we thole the night's watches, And ill the weary day: And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep, A waefu' gift gie they; For the songs they sing us, the sights they bring us, The morn blaws all away.

On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw, The burn rins blithe and fain: There's nought wi' me I wadna gie To look thereon again.

On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide: There sounds nae hunting-horn That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat Round banks where Tyne is born.

The Wansbeck sings with all her springs The bents and braes give ear; But the wood that rings wi' the sang she sings I may not see nor hear; For far and far thae blithe burns are, And strange is a' thing near.

The light there lightens, the day there brightens, The loud wind there lives free: Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me That I wad hear or see.

But O gin I were there again, Afar ayont the faem, Cauld and dead in the sweet saft bed That haps my sires at hame!

We'll see nae mair the sea-banks fair, And the sweet grey gleaming sky, And the lordly strand of Northumberland, And the goodly towers thereby; And none shall know but the winds that blow The graves wherein we lie.

Swinburne.



CXIX

THE REVEILLE

Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armed men the hum; Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum,— Saying, 'Come, Freemen, come! Ere your heritage be wasted,' said the quick alarming drum.

'Let me of my heart take counsel: War is not of life the sum; Who shall stay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall come?' But the drum Echoed, 'Come! Death shall reap the braver harvest,' said the solemn-sounding drum.

'But when won the coming battle, What of profit springs therefrom? What if conquest, subjugation, Even greater ills become?' But the drum Answered, 'Come! You must do the sum to prove it,' said the Yankee-answering drum.

'What if, 'mid the cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?' But the drum Answered, 'Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant,—Come!'

Thus they answered,—hoping, fearing, Some in faith, and doubting some, Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming, Said, 'My chosen people, come!' Then the drum, Lo! was dumb, For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, 'Lord, we come!'

Bret Harte.



CXX

WHAT THE BULLET SANG

O Joy of creation To be! O rapture to fly And be free! Be the battle lost or won Though its smoke shall hide the sun, I shall find my love—the one Born for me!

I shall know him where he stands, All alone, With the power in his hands Not o'erthrown; I shall know him by his face, By his god-like front and grace; I shall hold him for a space All my own!

It is he—O my love! So bold! It is I—All thy love Foretold! It is I. O love! what bliss! Dost thou answer to my kiss? O sweetheart! what is this Lieth there so cold?

Bret Harte.



CXXI

A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA

King Philip had vaunted his claims; He had sworn for a year he would sack us; With an army of heathenish names He was coming to fagot and stack us; Like the thieves of the sea he would track us, And shatter our ships on the main; But we had bold Neptune to back us— And where are the galleons of Spain?

His carackes were christened of dames To the kirtles whereof he would tack us; With his saints and his gilded stern-frames He had thought like an egg shell to crack us; Now Howard may get to his Flaccus, And Drake to his Devon again, And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus— For where are the galleons of Spain?

Let his Majesty hang to St. James The axe that he whetted to hack us; He must play at some lustier games Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us; To his mines of Peru he would pack us To tug at his bullet and chain; Alas! that his Greatness should lack us!— But where are the galleons of Spain?

ENVOY

Gloriana!—the Don may attack us Whenever his stomach be fain; He must reach us before he can rack us, ... And where are the galleons of Spain?

Dobson.



CXXII

THE WHITE PACHA

Vain is the dream! However Hope may rave, He perished with the folk he could not save, And though none surely told us he is dead, And though perchance another in his stead, Another, not less brave, when all was done, Had fled unto the southward and the sun, Had urged a way by force, or won by guile To streams remotest of the secret Nile, Had raised an army of the Desert men, And, waiting for his hour, had turned again And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know GORDON is dead, and these things are not so! Nay, not for England's cause, nor to restore Her trampled flag—for he loved Honour more— Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory, Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die. He will not come again, whate'er our need, He will not come, who is happy, being freed From the deathly flesh and perishable things, And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings. Nay, somewhere by the sacred River's shore He sleeps like those who shall return no more, No more return for all the prayers of men— Arthur and Charles—they never come again! They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem: Whate'er sick Hope may whisper, vain the dream!

Lang.



CXXIII

MOTHER AND SON

It is not yours, O mother, to complain, Not, mother, yours to weep, Though nevermore your son again Shall to your bosom creep, Though nevermore again you watch your baby sleep.

Though in the greener paths of earth Mother and child, no more We wander; and no more the birth Of me whom once you bore, Seems still the brave reward that once it seemed of yore;

Though as all passes, day and night, The seasons and the years, From you, O mother, this delight, This also disappears— Some profit yet survives of all your pangs and tears.

The child, the seed, the grain of corn, The acorn on the hill, Each for some separate end is born In season fit, and still Each must in strength arise to work the Almighty will.

So from the hearth the children flee, By that Almighty hand Austerely led; so one by sea Goes forth, and one by land; Nor aught of all men's sons escapes from that command.

So from the sally each obeys The unseen Almighty nod; So till the ending all their ways Blind-folded loth have trod: Nor knew their task at all, but were the tools of God.

And as the fervent smith of yore Beat out the glowing blade, Nor wielded in the front of war The weapons that he made, But in the tower at home still plied his ringing trade;

So like a sword the son shall roam On nobler missions sent; And as the smith remained at home In peaceful turret pent, So sits the while at home the mother well content.

Stevenson.



CXXIV

PRAYERS

God who created me Nimble and light of limb, In three elements free, To run, to ride, to swim: Not when the sense is dim, But now from the heart of joy, I would remember Him: Take the thanks of a boy.

Jesu, King and Lord, Whose are my foes to fight, Gird me with Thy sword Swift and sharp and bright. Thee would I serve if I might; And conquer if I can, From day-dawn till night, Take the strength of a man.

Spirit of Love and Truth, Breathing in grosser clay, The light and flame of youth, Delight of men in the fray, Wisdom in strength's decay; From pain, strife, wrong to be free This best gift I pray, Take my spirit to Thee.

Beeching.



CXXV

A BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side, And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride: He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day, And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away. Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides: 'Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?' Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar, 'If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are. At dusk he harries the Abazai—at dawn he is into Bonair— But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare, So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly, By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai. But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain are sown with Kamal's men.' The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he, With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell and the head of the gallows-tree. The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat— Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat. He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly, Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai, Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back, And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack. He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide. 'Ye shoot like a soldier,' Kamal said. 'Show now if ye can ride.' It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dust-devils go, The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe. The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above, But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars as a lady plays with a glove. They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn, The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn. The dun he fell at a water-course—in a woful heap fell he,— And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free. He has knocked the pistol out of his hand—small room was there to strive— ''Twas only by favour of mine,' quoth he, 'ye rode so long alive; There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump of tree, But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his knee. If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low, The little jackals that flee so fast were feasting all in a row; If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high, The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly.' Lightly answered the Colonel's son:—'Do good to bird and beast, But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast. If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away, Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay. They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. But if thou thinkest the price be fair, and thy brethren wait to sup, The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn,—howl, dog, and call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack, Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!' Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet. 'No talk shall be of dogs,' said he, 'when wolf and grey wolf meet. May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath. What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?' Lightly answered the Colonel's son:—'I hold by the blood of my clan; Take up the mare for my father's gift—By God she has carried a man!' The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled her nose in his breast, 'We be two strong men,' said Kamal then, 'but she loveth the younger best. So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise studded rein, My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain.' The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end, 'Ye have taken the one from a foe,' said he; 'will ye take the mate from a friend?' 'A gift for a gift,' said Kamal straight; 'a limb for the risk of a limb. Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!' With that he whistled his only son, who dropped from a mountain-crest— He trod the ling like a buck in spring and he looked like a lance in rest. 'Now here is thy master,' Kamal said, 'who leads a troop of the Guides, And thou must ride at his left side as shield to shoulder rides. Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed, Thy life is his—thy fate it is to guard him with thy head. And thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine, And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the Border-line, And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power— Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur.' They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault, They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt; They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod, On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous Names of God. The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy the dun, And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth but one. And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear— There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer. 'Ha' done! ha' done!' said the Colonel's son. 'Put up the steel at your sides! Last night ye had struck at a Border thief—to-night 'tis a man of the Guides!'

Oh, east is east, and west is west, and never the two shall meet Till earth and sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat. But there is neither east nor west, border or breed or birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.

Kipling.



CXXVI

THE FLAG OF ENGLAND

Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro— And what should they know of England who only England know?— The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag.

Must we borrow a clout from the Boer—to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt? We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share. What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!

The North Wind blew:—'From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go; I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe; By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God, And the liner splits on the ice-fields or the Dogger fills with cod.

I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.

The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night, The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light: What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare, Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!'

The South Wind sighed:—'From the Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main, Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.

Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys, I waked the palms to laughter—I tossed the scud in the breeze— Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm trees an English flag was flown.

I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard—ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.

My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!'

The East Wind roared:—'From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come, And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home. Look—look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!

The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead—I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I heaved your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.

Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake. But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake— Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid— Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.

The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows, The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare, Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!'

The West Wind called:—'In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die. They make my might their porter, they make my house their path, And I loose my neck from their service and whelm them all in my wrath.

I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole, They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll: For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath, And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.

But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.

The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it—the frozen dews have kissed— The morning stars have hailed it, a fellow-star in the mist. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare, Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!'

Kipling.



NOTES

I

This descant upon one of the most glorious feats of arms that even England has achieved is selected and pieced together from the magnificent verse assigned to the Chorus—'Enter RUMOUR painted full of tongues'—to King Henry V., the noble piece of pageantry produced in 1598, and a famous number from the Poems Lyrick and Pastorall (circ. 1605) of Michael Drayton. 'Look,' says Ben Jonson, in his Vision on the Muses of his Friend, Michael Drayton:—

Look how we read the Spartans were inflamed With bold Tyrtaeus' verse; when thou art named So shall our English youths urge on, and cry An AGINCOURT! an AGINCOURT! or die.

This, it is true, was in respect of another Agincourt, but we need not hesitate to appropriate it to our own: in respect of which—'To the Cambro-Britons and their Harp, His Ballad of Agincourt,' is the poet's own description—it is to note that Drayton had no model for it; that it remains wellnigh unique in English letters for over two hundred years; and that, despite such lapses into doggerel as the third stanza, and some curious infelicities of diction which need not here be specified, it remains, with a certain Sonnet, its author's chief title to fame. Compare the ballads of The Brave Lord Willoughby and The Honour of Bristol in the seventeenth century, the song of The Arethusa in the eighteenth, and in the nineteenth a choice of such Tyrtaean music as The Battle of the Baltic, Lord Tennyson's Ballad of the Fleet, and The Red Thread of Honour of the late Sir Francis Doyle.

II

Originally The True Character of a Happy Life: written and printed about 1614, and reprinted by Percy (1765) from the Reliquiae Wottonianae of 1651. Says Drummond of Ben Jonson, 'Sir Edward (sic) Wotton's verses of a Happy Life he hath by heart.' Of Wotton himself it was reserved for Cowley to remark that

He did the utmost bounds of knowledge find, And found them not so large as was his mind;

* * * * * *

And when he saw that he through all had passed He died—lest he should idle grow at last.

See Izaak Walton, Lives.

III, IV

From Underwoods (1640). The first, An Ode, is addressed to an innominate not yet, I believe, identified. The second is part of that Ode to the Immortal Memory of that Heroic Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morrison, which is the first true Pindaric in the language. Gifford ascribes it to 1629, when Sir Henry died, but it seems not to have been printed before 1640. Sir Lucius Cary is the Lord Falkland of Clarendon and Horace Walpole.

V

From The Mad Lover (produced about 1618: published in 1640). Compare the wooden imitations of Dryden in Amboyna and elsewhere.

VI

First printed, Mr. Bullen tells me, in 1640. Compare X. (Shirley, post, p. 20), and the cry from Raleigh's History of the World: 'O Eloquent, Just, and Mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the World hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the World and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched Greatness, all the Pride, Cruelty, and Ambition of Man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, "Hic Jacet."'

VII, VIII

This pair of 'noble numbers,' of brilliant and fervent lyrics, is from Hesperides, or, The Works both Human and Divine of Robert Herrich, Esq. (1648).

IX

No. 61, 'Vertue,' in The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, 1632-33. Compare Herbert to Christopher Farrer, as reported by Izaak Walton:—'Tell him that I do not repine, but am pleased with my want of health; and tell him, my heart is fixed on that place where true joy is only to be found, and that I long to be there, and do wait for my appointed change with hope and patience.'

X

From The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses, printed 1659. Compare VI. (Beaumont, ante, p. 15), and Bacon, Essays, 'On Death': 'But, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc dimittis, when a man hath attained worthy ends and expectations.'

XI

Written in the November of 1637, and printed next year in the Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King. 'In this Monody,' the title runs, 'the Author bewails a Learned Friend unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruine of our corrupted Clergie, then in their height.' King, who died at five- or six-and-twenty, was a personal friend of Milton's, but the true accents of grief are inaudible in Lycidas, which is, indeed, an example as perfect as exists of Milton's capacity for turning whatever he touched into pure poetry: an arrangement, that is, of 'the best words in the best order'; or, to go still further than Coleridge, the best words in the prescribed or inevitable sequence that makes the arrangement art. For the innumerable allusions see Professor Masson's edition of Milton (Macmillan, 1890), i. 187-201, and iii. 254-276.

XII

The Eighth Sonnet (Masson): 'When the Assault was Intended to the City.' Written in 1642, with Rupert and the King at Brentford, and printed in the edition of 1645.

XIII

The Sixteenth Sonnet (Masson): 'To the Lord General Cromwell, May, 1652: On the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel.' Printed by Philips, Life of Milton, 1694. In defence of the principle of Religious Voluntaryism, and against the intolerant Fifteen Proposals of John Owen and the majority of the Committee.

XIV

The Eighteenth Sonnet (Masson). 'Written in 1655,' says Masson, and referring 'to the persecution instituted, in the early part of the year, by Charles Emmanuel II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont, against his Protestant subjects of the valleys of the Cottian Alps.' In January, an edict required them to turn Romanists or quit the country out of hand; it was enforced with such barbarity that Cromwell took the case of the sufferers in hand; and so vigorous was his action that the Edict was withdrawn and a convention was signed (August 1655) by which the Vaudois were permitted to worship as they would. Printed in 1673.

XV

The Nineteenth Sonnet (Masson) 'may have been written any time between 1652 and 1655,' the first years of Milton's blindness, 'but it follows the Sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre in Milton's own volume of 1673.'

XVI, XVII

From the choric parts of Samson Agonistes (i.e. the Agonist, or Wrestler), first printed in 1671.

XVIII

Of uncertain date; first printed by Watson 1706-11. The version given here is Emerson's (which is shorter than the original), with the exception of the last stanza, which is Napier's (Montrose, i. Appendices). Napier is at great pains to prove that the ballad is allegorical, and that Montrose's 'dear and only love' was that unhappy King whose Epitaph, the famous Great, Good, and Just, he is said—falsely—to have written with his sword. Be this as it may, the verses have a second part, which has dropped into oblivion. For the Great Marquis, who reminded De Retz of the men in Plutarch's Lives, was not averse from the practice of poetry, and wrote, besides these numbers, a prayer ('Let them bestow on every airth a limb'), a 'pasquil,' a pleasant string of conceits in praise of woman, a set of vehement and fiery memorial stanzas on the King, and one copy of verses more.

XIX, XX

To Lucasta going to the Wars and To Althea from Prison are both, I believe, from Lovelace's Lucasta (1645).

XXI

First printed by Captain Thomson, Works (1776), from a copy he held, on what seems excellent authority, to be in Marvell's hand. The true title is A Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650). It is always ascribed to Marvell (whose verse was first collected and printed by his widow in 1681), but there are faint doubts as to the authorship.

XXII

Poems (1681). This elegant and romantic lyric appears to have been inspired by a passage in the life of John Oxenbridge, of whom, 'religionis causa oberrantem,' it is enough to note that, after migrating to Bermudas, where he had a church, and being 'ejected' at the Restoration from an English cure, he went to Surinam (1662-67), to Barbadoes (1667), and to New England (1669), where he was made pastor of 'the First Church of Boston' (1670), and where he died in 1674. These details are from Mr. Grosart's Marvell (1875), i. 82-85, and ii. 5-8.

XXIII

Dryden's second Ode for Saint Cecilia's Day, Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Sound, as it is called, was written and printed in 1697. As it was designed for music (it was set by Jeremiah Clarke), the closing lines of every strophe are repeated by way of chorus. I have removed these repetitions as impertinent to the effect of the poem in print, and as interrupting the rushing vehemency of the narrative. The incident described is the burning of Persepolis.

XXIV

Written early in 1782, in memory of Robert Levett: 'an old and faithful friend,' says Johnson, and withal 'a very useful and very blameless man.' Excepting for the perfect odes of Cowper (post, pp. 85, 86), in these excellent and affecting verses the 'classic' note is audible for the last time in this book until we reach the Iphigeneia of Walter Savage Landor, who was a lad of seven at the date of their composition. They were written seventeen years after the publication of the Reliques (1765), and a full quarter century after the appearance of The Bard (1757); but in style they proceed from the age of Pope. For the rest, the Augustan Muse was an utter stranger to the fighting inspiration. Her gait was pedestrian, her purpose didactic, her practice neat and formal: and she prosed of England's greatest captain, the victor of Blenheim, as tamely as himself had been 'a parson in a tye-wig'—himself, and not the amiable man of letters who acted as her amanuensis for the nonce.

XXV

Chevy Chase is here preferred to Otterbourne as appealing more directly to Englishmen. The text is Percy's, and the movement like that of all the English ballads, is jog-trot enough. Sidney's confession—that he never heard it, even from a blind fiddler, but it stirred him like the sound of a trumpet—refers, no doubt, to an earlier version than the present, which appears to date from the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Compare The Brave Lord Willoughby and The Honour of Bristol (post, pp. 60, 73).

XXVI

First printed by Percy. The text I give is, with some few variants, that of the vastly better version in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3). Of the 'history' of the ballad the less said the better. The argument is neatly summarised by Mr. Allingham, p. 376 of The Ballad Book ('Golden Treasury,' 1879).

skeely = skilful white monie = silver gane = would suffice half-fou = the eighth part of a peck gurly = rough lap = sprang bout = bolt twine = thread, i.e. canvas wap = warp flattered = 'fluttered, or rather, floated' (Scott) kaims = combs

XXVII

Printed by Percy, 'from an old black-letter copy; with some conjectural emendations.' At the suggestion of my friend, the Rev. Mr. Hunt, I have restored the original readings, as in truer consonancy with the vainglorious, insolent, and swaggering ballad spirit. As for the hero, Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, described as 'one of the Queen's best swordsmen' and 'a great master of the art military,' he succeeded Leicester in the command in the Low Countries in 1587, distinguished himself repeatedly in fight with the Spaniards, and died in 1601. 'Both Norris and Turner were famous among the military men of that age' (Percy). In the Roxburgh Ballads the full title of the broadside—which is 'printed for S. Coles in Vine St., near Hatton Garden,'—is as follows:—'A true relation of a famous and bloudy Battell fought in Flanders by the noble and valiant Lord Willoughby with 1500 English against 40,000 Spaniards, wherein the English obtained a notable victory for the glory and renown of our nation. Tune: Lord Willoughby.'

XXVIII

First printed by Tom D'Urfey, Wit and Mirth, etc. (1720), vi. 289-91; revised by Robert Burns for The Scots Musical Magazine, and again by Allan Cunningham for The Songs of Scotland; given with many differences, 'long current in Selkirkshire,' in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The present version is a rifaccimento from Burns and Scott. It is worth noting that Graeme (pronounced 'Grime'), and Graham are both forms of one name, which name was originally Grimm, and that, according to some, the latter orthography is the privilege of the chief of the clan.

XXIX

First printed in the Minstrelsy. This time the 'history' is authentic enough. It happened early in 1596, when Salkeld, the Deputy Warden of the Western Marches, seized under truce the person of William Armstrong of Kinmont—elsewhere described as 'Will Kinmonde the common thieffe'—and haled him to Carlisle Castle, whence he was rescued—'with shouting and crying and sound of trumpet'—by the Laird of Buccleuch, Keeper of Liddesdale, and a troop of two hundred horse. 'The Queen of England,' says Spottiswoode, 'having notice sent her of what was done, stormed not a little'; but see the excellent summary compiled by Scott (who confesses to having touched up the ballad) for the Minstrelsy.

Haribee = the gallows hill at Carlisle reiver = a border thief, one of a class which lived sparely, fought stoutly, entertained the strictest sense of honour and justice, went ever on horseback, and carried the art of cattle-lifting to the highest possible point of perfection (National Observer, 30th May, 1891) yett = gate lawing = reckoning basnet = helmet curch = coif or cap lightly = to scorn in a lowe = on fire slocken = to slake splent = shoulder-piece spauld = shoulder broken men = outlaws marshal men = officers of law rank reiver = common thief herry = harry corbie = crow lear = learning row-footed = rough-shod spait = flood garred = made slogan = battle-cry stear = stir saft = light fleyed = frightened bairns = children spier = ask hente = lifted, haled maill = rent furs = furrows trew = trust Christentie = Christendom

XXX

Communicated by Mr. Hunt,—who dates it about 1626—from Seyer's Memoirs, Historical and Topographical, of Bristol and its Neighbourhood (1821-23). The full title is The Honour of Bristol: shewing how the Angel Gabriel of Bristol fought with three ships, who boarded as many times, wherein we cleared our decks and killed five hundred of their men, and wounded many more, and made them fly into Cales, when we lost but three men, to the Honour of the Angel Gabriel of Bristol. To the tune Our Noble King in his Progress. Cales (13), pronounced as a dissyllable, is of course Cadiz. It is fair to add that this spirited and amusing piece of doggerel has been severely edited.

XXXI

From the Minstrelsy, where it is 'given, without alteration or improvement, from the most accurate copy that could be recovered.' The story runs that Helen Irving (or Helen Bell), of Kirkconnell in Dumfriesshire, was beloved by Adam Fleming, and (as some say) Bell of Blacket House; that she favoured the first but her people encouraged the second; that she was thus constrained to tryst with Fleming by night in the churchyard, 'a romantic spot, almost surrounded by the river Kirtle'; that they were here surprised by the rejected suitor, who fired at his rival from the far bank of the stream; that Helen, seeking to shield her lover, was shot in his stead; and that Fleming, either there and then, or afterwards in Spain, avenged her death on the body of her slayer. Wordsworth has told the story in a copy of verses which shows, like so much more of his work, how dreary a poetaster he could be.

XXXII

This epic-in-little, as tremendous an invention as exists in verse, is from the Minstrelsy: 'as written down from tradition by a lady' (C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe).

corbies = crows fail-dyke = wall of turf hause-bane = breast-bone theek = thatch

XXXIII

Begun in 1755, and finished and printed (with The Progress of Poetry) in 1757. 'Founded,' says the poet, 'on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he concluded the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.' The 'agonising king' (line 56) is Edward II.; the 'she-wolf of France' (57), Isabel his queen; the 'scourge of heaven' (60), Edward III.; the 'sable warrior' (67), Edward the Black Prince. Lines 75-82 commemorate the rise and fall of Richard II.; lines 83-90, the Wars of the Roses, the murders in the Tower, the 'faith' of Margaret of Anjou, the 'fame' of Henry V., the 'holy head' of Henry VI. The 'bristled boar' (93) is symbolical of Richard III.; 'half of thy heart' (99) of Eleanor of Castile, 'who died a few years after the conquest of Wales.' Line 110 celebrates the accession of the House of Tudor in fulfilment of the prophecies of Merlin and Taliessin; lines 115-20, Queen Elizabeth; lines 128-30, Shakespeare; lines 131-32, Milton; and the 'distant warblings' of line 133, 'the succession of poets after Milton's time' (Gray).

XXXIV, XXXV

Written, the one in September 1782 (in the August of which year the Royal George (108 guns) was overset in Portsmouth Harbour with the loss of close on a thousand souls), and the other 'after reading Hume's History in 1780' (Benham).

XXXVI

It is worth recalling that at one time Walter Scott attributed this gallant lyric, which he printed in the Minstrelsy, to a 'greater Graham'—the Marquis of Montrose.

XXXVII, XXXVIII

Of these, the first, Blow High, Blow Low, was sung in The Seraglio (1776), a forgotten opera; the second, said to have been inspired by the death of the author's brother, a naval officer, in The Oddities (1778)—a 'table-entertainment,' where Dibdin was author, actor, singer, musician, accompanist, everything but audience and candle-snuffer. They are among the first in time of his sea-ditties.

XXXIX

It is told (Life, W. H. Curran, 1819) that Curran met a deserter, drank a bottle, and talked of his chances, with him, and put his ideas and sentiments into this song.

XL

The Arethusa, Mr. Hannay tells me, being attached to Keppel's fleet at the mouth of the Channel, was sent to order the Belle Poule, which was cruising with some smaller craft in search of Keppel's ships, to come under his stern. The Belle Poule (commanded by M. Chadeau de la Clocheterie) refusing, the Arethusa (Captain Marshall) opened fire. The ships were fairly matched, and in the action which ensued the Arethusa appears to have got the worst of it. In the end, after about an hour's fighting, Keppel's liners came up, and the Belle Poule made off. She was afterwards driven ashore by a superior English force, and it is an odd coincidence that in 1789 the Arethusa ran ashore off Brest during her action (10th March) with l'Aigrette. As for the French captain, he lived to command l'Hercule, De Grasse's leading ship in the great sea-fight (12th April 1782) with Rodney off Dominica, where he was killed.

XLI

From the Songs of Experience (1794).

XLII

Scots Musical Museum, 1788. Adapted from, or rather suggested by, the Farewell, which Macpherson, a cateran 'of great personal strength and musical accomplishment,' is said to have played and sung at the gallows foot; thereafter breaking his violin across his knee and submitting his neck to the hangman.

spring = a melody in quick time sturt = molestation

XLIII

Museum, 1796. Burns told Thomson and Mrs. Dunlop that this noble and most moving song was old; but nobody believed him then, and nobody believes him now.

pint-stoup = pint-mug braes = hill-sides gowans = daisies paidl't = paddled burn = brook fiere = friend, companion guid-willie = well-meant, full of good-will waught = draught

XLIV

The first four lines are old. The rest were written apparently in 1788, when the poet sent this song and Auld Lang Syne to Mrs. Dunlop. It appeared in the Museum, 1790.

tassie = a cup; Fr. 'tasse'

XLV

About 1777-80: printed 1801. 'One of my juvenile works,' says Burns. 'I do not think it very remarkable, either for its merits or demerits.' But Hazlitt thought the world of it, and now it passes for one of Burns's masterpieces.

trysted = appointed stoure = dust and din

XLVI

Museum, 1796. Attributed, in one shape or another, to a certain Captain Ogilvie. Sharpe, too, printed a broadside in which the third stanza (used more than once by Sir Walter) is found as here. But Scott Douglas (Burns, iii. 173) has 'no doubt that this broadside was printed after 1796,' and as it stands the thing is assuredly the work of Burns. The refrain and the metrical structure have been used by Scott (Rokeby, IV. 28), Carlyle, Charles Kingsley (Dolcino to Margaret), and Mr. Swinburne (A Reiver's Neck Verse) among others.

XLVII-LII

Of the first four numbers, the high-water mark of Wordsworth's achievement, all four were written in 1802; the second and third were published in 1803; the first and fourth in 1807. The Ode to Duty was written in 1805, and published in 1807, to which year belongs that Song for the Feast of Brougham Castle, from which I have extracted the excellent verses here called Two Victories.

LIII-LXII

The first three numbers are from Marmion (1808): I. Introduction; V. 12; and VI. 18-20, 25-27, and 33-34. The next is from The Lady of the Lake (1810), I. 1-9: The Outlaw is from Rokeby (1813), III. 16; the Pibroch was published in 1816; The Omnipotent and The Red Harlaw are from The Antiquary (1816), and the Farewell from The Pirate (1821). As for Bonny Dundee, that incomparable ditty, it was written as late as 1825. 'The air of Bonny Dundee running in my head to-day,' he writes under date of 22d December (Diary, 1890, i. 61), 'I wrote a few verses to it before dinner, taking the key-note from the story of Clavers leaving the Scottish Convention of Estates in 1688-9. I wonder if they are good.' See The Doom of Devorgoil (1830), Note A, Act II. sc. 2.

LXIII

This unsurpassed piece of art, in which a music the most exquisite is used to body forth a set of suggestions that seem dictated by the very Spirit of Romance, was produced, under the influence of 'an anodyne,' as early as 1797. Coleridge, who calls it Kubla Khan: A Vision within a Dream, avers that, having fallen asleep in his chair over a sentence from Purchas's Pilgrimage—'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built and a stately garden thereto; and thus ten miles of ground were enclosed with a wall,'—he remained unconscious for about three hours, 'during which time he had the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than three hundred lines'; 'if that,' he adds, 'can be called composition, in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.' On awakening, he proceeded to write out his 'composition,' and had set down as much of it as is printed here, when 'he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock,' whose departure, an hour after, left him wellnigh oblivious of the rest. This confession, which is dated 1816, has been generally accepted as true; but Coleridge had a trick of dreaming dreams about himself which makes doubt permissible.

LXIV

From the Hellenics (written in Latin, 1814-20, and translated into English at the instance of Lady Blessington), 1846. See Colvin, Landor ('English Men of Letters'), pp. 189, 190.

LXV-LXVII

Of the first, 'Napoleon and the British Sailor' (The Pilgrim of Glencoe, 1842), Campbell writes that the 'anecdote has been published in several public journals, both French and English.' 'My belief,' he continues, 'in its authenticity was confirmed by an Englishman, long resident in Boulogne, lately telling me that he remembered the circumstance to have been generally talked of in the place.' Authentic or not, I have preferred the story to Hohenlinden, as less hackneyed, for one thing, and, for another, less pretentious and rhetorical. The second (Gertrude of Wyoming, 1809) is truly one of 'the glories of our birth and state.' The third (idem) I have ventured to shorten by three stanzas: a proceeding which, however culpable it seem, at least gets rid of the chief who gave a country's wounds relief by stopping a battle, eliminates the mermaid and her song (the song that 'condoles'), and ends the lyric on as sonorous and romantic a word as even Shakespeare ever used.

LXVIII

Corn Law Rhymes, 1831.

LXIX

From that famous and successful forgery, Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song (1810), written when Allan was a working mason in Dumfriesshire. I have omitted a stanza as inferior to the rest.

LXXI

English Songs and other Small Poems, 1834.

LXXII-LXXVIII

The first is from the Hebrew Melodies (1815); the next is selected from The Siege of Corinth (1816), 22-33; Alhama (idem) is a spirited yet faithful rendering of the Romance muy Doloroso del Sitio y Toma de Alhama, which existed both in Spanish and in Arabic, and whose effect was such that 'it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors on the pain of death in Granada' (Byron); No. LXXV., surely one of the bravest songs in the language, was addressed (idem) to Thomas Moore; the tremendous Race with Death is lifted out of the Ode in Venice (1819); for the next number see Don Juan, III. (1821); the last of all, 'Stanzas inscribed On this day I completed my Thirty-sixth year' (1824), is the last verse that Byron wrote.

LXXIX

Napier has described the terrific effect of Napoleon's pursuit; but in the operations before Corunna he was distanced, if not out-generalled, by Sir John Moore, and ere the first days of 1809 he gave his command to Soult, who pressed us vainly through the hill-country between Leon and Gallicia, and got beaten at Corunna for his pains. Wolfe, who was an Irish parson and died of consumption, wrote some spirited verses on the flight of Busaco, but this admirable elegy—'I will show you,' said Byron to Shelley (Medwin, ii. 154) 'one you have never seen, that I consider little if at all inferior to the best, the present prolific age has brought forth'—remains his passport to immortality. It was printed, not by the author, in an Irish newspaper; was copied all over Britain; was claimed by liar after liar in succession; and has been reprinted more often, perhaps, than any poem of the century.

LXXX

From Snarleyow, or the Dog Fiend (1837). Compare Nelson to Collingwood: 'Victory, 25th June, 1805,—May God bless you and send you alongside the Santissima Trinidad.'

LXXXI, LXXXII

The story of Casabianca is, I believe, untrue; but the intention of the singer, alike in this number and in the next, is excellent. Each indeed is, in its way, a classic. The Mayflower sailed from Southampton in 1626.

LXXXIII

This magnificent sonnet, On First Reading Chapman's Homer, was printed in 1817. The 'Cortez' of the eleventh verse is a mistake; the discoverer of the Pacific being Nunez de Balboa.

LXXXIV-LXXXVII

The Lays are dated 1824; they have passed through edition after edition; and if Matthew Arnold disliked and contemned them (see Sir F. H. Doyle, Reminiscences and Opinions, pp. 178-87), the general is wise enough to know them by heart. But a book that is 'a catechism to fight' (in Jonson's phrase) would have sinned against itself had it taken no account of them, and I have given Horatius in its integrity: if only, as Landor puts it,

To show the British youth, who ne'er Will lag behind, what Romans were, When all the Tuscans and their Lars Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.

As for The Armada, I have preferred it to The Battle of Naseby, first, because it is neither vicious nor ugly, and the other is both; and, second, because it is so brilliant an outcome of that capacity for dealing with proper names which Macaulay, whether poet or not, possesses in common with none but certain among the greater poets. For The Last Buccaneer (a curious anticipation of some effects of Mr. Rudyard Kipling), and that noble thing, the Jacobite's Epitaph, they are dated 1839 and 1845 respectively.

LXXXVIII

The Poetical Works of Robert Stephen Hawker (Kegan Paul, 1879). By permission of Mrs. R. S. Hawker. 'With the exception of the choral lines—

And shall Trelawney die? There's twenty thousand Cornishmen Will know the reason why!—

and which have been, ever since the imprisonment by James II. of the Seven Bishops—one of them Sir Jonathan Trelawney—a popular proverb throughout Cornwall, the whole of this song was composed by me in the year 1825. I wrote it under a stag-horned oak in Sir Beville's Walk in Stowe Wood. It was sent by me anonymously to a Plymouth paper, and there it attracted the notice of Mr. Davies Gilbert, who reprinted it at his private press at Eastbourne under the avowed impression that it was the original ballad. It had the good fortune to win the eulogy of Sir Walter Scott, who also deemed it to be the ancient song. It was praised under the same persuasion by Lord Macaulay and Mr. Dickens.'—Author's Note.

LXXXIX-XCII

From The Sea Side and the Fire Side, 1851; Birds of Passage, Flight the First, and Flight the Second; and Flower de Luce, 1866. Of these four examples of the picturesque and taking art of Longfellow, I need say no more than that all are printed in their integrity, with the exception of the first. This I leave the lighter by a moral and an application, both of which, superfluous or not, are remote from the general purpose of this book: a confession in which I may include the following number, Mr. Whittier's Barbara Frietchie (In War-Time, 1863.)