Chapter CXXVI: The Flag of England 335 (7)

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 REVEILL…

Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands,
And of armËd 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 TyrtÊus' 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 TyrtÊan 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 _ReliquiÊ WottonianÊ_ 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 GrÊme (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