With all we guard most dear and most
All records rank'd with thine,
Here be thy home, brave soul, thy undecaying shrine.
ETSI OMNES, EGO NON
HERE where under earth his head Finds a last and lonely bed, Let him speak upon the stone : Etsi omnes, ego non.
Here he shall not know the eyes Bent upon their sordid prize Earthward ever, nor the beat Of the hurrying faithless feet.
None to make him perfect cheer Join'd him on his journey drear; Some too soon, who fell away; Some too late, who mourn to-day.
Yet while comrades one by one Made denial and were gone, Not the less he labor'd on: Etsi omnes, ego non.
Surely his were heart and mind Meet for converse with his kind, Light of genial fancy free, Grace of sweetest sympathy.
But his soul had other scope, Holden of a larger hope,
George Francis Savage Armstrong
AUTUMN MEMORIES WHEN russet beech-leaves drift in air, And withering bracken gilds the ling, And red haws brighten hedgerows bare, And only plaintive robins sing; When autumn whirlwinds curl the sea, And mountain-tops are cold with haze, Then saddest thoughts revisit me,
I sit and dream of the olden days.
When chestnut-leaves lie yellow on ground, And brown nuts break the prickled husk, And nests on naked boughs are found, And swallows shrill no more at dusk,
And folks are glad in house to be, And up the flue the faggots blaze, Then climb my little boys my knee To hear me tell of the olden days.
YEAR after year
The leaf and the shoot; The babe and the nestling, The worm at the root; The bride at the altar,
The corpse on the bier- The Earth and its story, Year after year.
Sir Francis Hastings Dople
THE OLD CAVALIER
"FOR our martyr'd Charles I pawn'd my plate,
For his son I spent my all,
That a churl might dine, and drink my wine, And preach in my father's hall : That father died on Marston Moor,
My son on Worcester plain ; But the king he turn'd his back on me When he got his own again.
"The other day, there came, God wot! A solemn, pompous ass,
Who begged to know if I did not go To the sacrifice of Mass :
I told him fairly to his face,
That in the field of fight
I had shouted loud for Church and King, When he would have run outright.
"He talk'd of the Man of Babylon With his rosaries and copes,
As if a Roundhead was n't worse Than half a hundred Popes.
I don't know what the people mean, With their horror and affright; All Papists that I ever knew Fought stoutly for the right.
"I now am poor and lonely,
This cloak is worn and old, But yet it warms my loyal heart, Through sleet, and rain, and cold, When I call to mind the Cavaliers, Bold Rupert at their head,
Bursting through blood and fire, with cries That might have wak'd the dead.
"Then spur and sword was the battle word, And we made their helmets ring, Howling like madmen, all the while, For God and for the King. And though they snuffled psalms, to give The Rebel-dogs their due,
When the roaring shot pour'd close and hot They were stalwart men and true.
"On the fatal field of Naseby,
Where Rupert lost the day By hanging on the flying crowd Like a lion on his prey,
I stood and fought it out, until, In spite of plate and steel, The blood that left my veins that day Flow'd up above my heel.
"And certainly, it made those quail Who never quail'd before, To look upon the awful front
Which Cromwell's horsemen wore. I felt that every hope was gone, When I saw their squadrons form, And gather for the final charge
Like the coming of the storm.
"Oh! where was Rupert in that hour Of danger, toil, and strife?
It would have been to all brave men Worth a hundred years of life
To have seen that black and gloomy force, As it poured down in line, Met midway by the Royal horse And Rupert of the Rhine.
"All this is over now, and I
Must travel to the tomb,
Though the king I serv'd has got his own, In poverty and gloom.
Well, well, I serv'd him for himself, So I must not now complain, But I often wish that I had died With my son on Worcester plain."
LAST night, among his fellow roughs, He jested, quaff'd, and swore : A drunken private of the Buffs, Who never look'd before. To-day, beneath the foeman's frown, He stands in Elgin's place, Ambassador from Britain's crown, And type of all her race.
Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught, Bewilder'd, and alone,
A heart, with English instinct fraught, He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limo, Bring cord, or axe, or flame:
He only knows, that not through him Shall England come to shame.
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