But wider the wing and the vision
That quicken the spirit have spread
Since memory beheld with derision

Man's hope to be more than his dead.
From the mists and the snows and the thunders
Your spirit has brought for us forth
Light, music, and joy in the wonders
And charms of the North.

The wars and the woes and the glories
That quicken and lighten and rain
From the clouds of its chronicled stories,
The passion, the pride, and the pain,
Where echoes were mute and the token
Was lost of the spells that they spake,
Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken
Of ages that break.

For you, and for none of us other,
Time is not: the dead that must live
Hold commune with you as a brother
By grace of the life that you give.
The heart that was in them is in you,
Their soul in your spirit endures:
The strength of their song is the sinew
Of this that is yours.

Hence is it that life, everlasting
As light and as music, abides

In the sound of the surge of it, casting
Sound back to the surge of the tides,
Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen
Watch, hurtling to windward and lea,
Round England, unbacked of her horsemen,
The steeds of the sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

XCVIII

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY

RAIN came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,

They stepping steadily-only too readily!—

Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.

Great guns were gleaming there - living things seeming there

Cloaked in their tar cloths, upnosed to the night: Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe,

Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.

Lamplight all drearily, blinking and blearily
Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss,
While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to
them

Not to court peril that honour could miss.

Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded those eyes of

ours,

When at last moved away under the arch

All we loved. Aid for them each woman prayed for them

Treading back slowly the track of their march.

Someone said 'Nevermore will they come! Evermore Are they now lost to us!' Oh, it was wrong! Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways

Bear them through safely-in brief time or long. Yet-voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us,

Hint, in the night-time, when life-beats are low, Other and graver things. . . Hold we to braver things

Wait we-in trust-what Time's fullness shall show.

Thomas Hardy.

XCIX

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 scatter 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?
Austin Dobson.

C

RANK AND FILE

O UNDISTINGUISHED Dead!

Whom the bent covers, or the rock-strewn steep
Shows to the stars, for you I mourn-I weep,
O undistinguished Dead!

None knows your name.

Blackened and blurred in the wild battle's brunt, Hotly you fell . . . with all your wounds in front:This is your fame!

Austin Dobson.

CI

THE FAIR BRASS

AN effigy of brass

Trodden by careless feet
Of worshippers that pass,
Beautiful and complete,

Lieth in the sombre aisle
Of this old church unwreckt,
And still from modern style
Shielded by kind neglect.

It shows a warrior arm'd:
Across his iron breast

His hands by death are charmed
To leave his sword at rest,

Wherewith he led his men
O'ersea, and smote to hell
The astonisht Saracen,
Nor doubted he did well.

Would we could teach our sons

His trust in face of doom,

Or give our bravest ones

A comparable tomb:

Such as to look on shrives
The heart of half its care;
So in each line survives
The spirit that made it fair,
So fair the characters,
With which the dusty scroll,
That tells his title, stirs
A requiem for his soul.

Yet dearer far to me,
And brave as he are they,
Who fight by land and sea
For England at this day;
Whose vile memorials,
In mournful marbles gilt,
Deface the beauteous walls
By growing glory built.

Heirs of our antique shrines,
Sires of our future fame,
Whose starry honour shines
In many a noble name

Across the deathful days,
Link'd in the brotherhood

That loves our country's praise,
And lives for heavenly good.

Robert Bridges.

CII

THE GENTLE

WE come from tower and grange, Where the grey woodlands range, Folding chivalric halls in ancient ease; From Erin's rain-wet rocks,

Or where the ocean-shocks

Thunder between the glimmering Hebrides;
And many-spired cities grave,

With terraced riverain hoar lapped by the storied

wave.