Poems: New and Old Part 27

You, too, I doubt not, from your Lama's hall Can see the Stand above the worn old wall,

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Where then they clamoured as our race we sped, Where now they number our heroic dead.*

As clear as life you, too, can hear the sound Of voices once for all by "lock-up" bound, And see the flash of eyes still n.o.bly bright But in the "Bigside scrimmage" lost to sight.

Old loves, old rivalries, old happy times, These well may move your memory and my rhymes; These are the Past; but there is that, my friend, Between us two, that has nor time nor end.

Though wide apart the lines our fate has traced Since those far shadows of our boyhood raced, In the dim region all men must explore-- The mind's Thibet, where none has gone before-- Rounding some shoulder of the lonely trail We met once more, and raised a l.u.s.ty hail.

"Forward!" cried one, "for us no beaten track, No city continuing, no turning back: The past we love not for its being past, But for its hope and ardour forward cast: The victories of our youth we count for gain Only because they steeled our hearts to pain, And hold no longer even Clifton great Save as she schooled our wills to serve the State.

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Nay, England's self, whose thousand-year-old name Burns in our blood like ever-smouldering flame, Whose t.i.tan shoulders as the world are wide And her great pulses like the Ocean tide, Lives but to bear the hopes we shall not see-- Dear mortal Mother of the race to be."

Thereto you answered, "Forward! in G.o.d's name; I own no lesser law, no narrower claim.

A freeman's Reason well might think it scorn To toil for those who may be never born, But for some Cause not wholly out of ken, Some all-directing Will that works with men, Some Universal under which may fall The minor premiss of our effort small; In Whose unending purpose, though we cease, We find our impulse and our only peace."

So pa.s.sed our greeting, till we turned once more, I to my desk and you to rule Indore.

To meet again--ah! when? Yet once we met, And to one dawn our faces still are set.

EXETER,.

'September' 10, 1904.

* In the school quadrangle at Clifton, the site from which, upon occasion, the grand stand used to overlook the Close, is now occupied by the Memorial to those Cliftonians who fell in the South African War.

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'An Essay on Criticism'

'Tis hard to say if greater waste of time Is seen in writing or in reading rhyme; But, of the two, less dangerous it appears To tire our own than poison others' ears.

Time was, the owner of a peevish tongue, The pebble of his wrath unheeding flung, Saw the faint ripples touch the sh.o.r.e and cease, And in the duckpond all again was peace.

But since that Science on our eyes hath laid The wondrous clay from her own spittle made, We see the widening ripples pa.s.s beyond, The pond becomes the world, the world a pond, All ether trembles when the pebble falls, And a light word may ring in starry halls.

When first on earth the swift iambic ran Men here and there were found but nowhere Man.

From whencesoe'er their origin they drew, Each on its separate soil the species grew, And by selection, natural or not, Evolved a fond belief in one small spot.

The Greek himself, with all his wisdom, took For the wide world his bright Aegean nook, {221}.

For fatherland, a town, for public, all Who at one time could hear the herald bawl: For him barbarians beyond his gate Were lower beings, of a different date; He never thought on such to spend his rhymes, And if he did, they never read the 'Times'.

Now all is changed, on this side and on that, The Herald's learned to print and pa.s.s the hat; His tone is so much raised that, far or near, All with a sou to spend his news may hear,-- And who but, far or near, the sou affords To learn the worst of foreigners and lords!

So comes the Pressman's heaven on earth, wherein One touch of hatred proves the whole world kin-- "Our rulers are the best, and theirs the worst, Our cause is always just and theirs accurst, Our troops are heroes, hirelings theirs or slaves, Our diplomats but children, theirs but knaves, Our Press for independence justly prized, Theirs bought or blind, inspired or subsidized.

For the world's progress what was ever made Like to our tongue, our Empire and our trade?"

So chant the nations, till at last you'd think Men could no nearer howl to folly's brink; Yet some in England lately won renown By howling word for word, but upside down.

But where, you cry, could poets find a place (If poets we possessed) in this disgrace?

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Mails will be mails, Reviews must be reviews, But why the Critic with the Bard confuse?

Alas! Apollo, it must be confessed Has lately gone the way of all the rest.

No more alone upon the far-off hills With song serene the wilderness he fills, But in the forum now his art employs And what he lacks in knowledge gives in noise.

At first, ere he began to feel his feet, He begged a corner in the hindmost sheet, Concealed with Answers and Acrostics lay, And held aloof from Questions of the Day.

But now, grown bold, he dashes to the front, Among the leaders bears the battle's brunt, Takes steel in hand, and cheaply unafraid Spurs a lame Pegasus on Jameson's Raid, Or pipes the fleet in melodrama's tones To ram the d.a.m.ned on their Infernal Thrones.

Sure, Scriblerus himself could scarce have guessed The Art of Sinking might be further pressed: But while these errors almost tragic loom The Indian Drummer has but raised a boom.

"So well I love my country that the man Who serves her can but serve her on my plan; Be slim, be stalky, leave your Public Schools To m.u.f.fs like Bobs and other flannelled fools; The lordliest life (since Buller made such hay) Is killing men two thousand yards away;

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You shoot the pheasant, but it costs too much And does not tend to decimate the Dutch; Your duty plainly then before you stands, Conscription is the law for seagirt lands; Prate not of freedom! Since I learned to shoot I itch to use my ammunition boot."

An odd way this, we thought, to criticize-- This barrackyard "Attention! d---- your eyes!"

But England smiled and lightly pardoned him, For was he not her Mowgli and her Kim?

But now the neighbourhood remonstrance roars, He's naughty still, and naughty out of doors.

'Tis well enough that he should tell Mamma Her sons are tired of being what they are, But to give friendly bears, expecting buns, A paper full of stale unwholesome Huns-- One might be led to think, from all this work, That little master's growing quite a Turk.

O Rudyard, Rudyard, in our hours of ease (Before the war) you were not hard to please: You loved a regiment whether fore or aft, You loved a subaltern, however daft, You loved the very dregs of barrack life, The amorous colonel and the sergeant's wife.

You sang the land where dawn across the Bay Comes up to waken queens in Mandalay, The land where comrades sleep by Cabul ford, And Valour, brown or white, is Borderlord, {224}.

The secret Jungle-life of child and beast, And all the magic of the dreaming East.

These, these we loved with you, and loved still more The Seven Seas that break on Britain's sh.o.r.e, The winds that know her labour and her pride, And the Long Trail whereon our fathers died.

In that Day's Work be sure you gained, my friend, If not the critic's name, at least his end; Your song and story might have roused a slave To see life bodily and see it brave.

With voice so genial and so long of reach To your Own People you the Law could preach, And even now and then without offence To Lesser Breeds expose their lack of sense.

Return, return! and let us hear again The ringing engines and the deep-sea rain, The roaring chanty of the sh.o.r.e-wind's verse, Too bluff to bicker and too strong to curse.

Let us again with hearts serene behold The coastwise beacons that we knew of old; So shall you guide us when the stars are veiled, And stand among the Lights that never Failed.

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'Le Byron de Nos Jours; or, The English Bar and Cross Reviewers.'

Still must I hear?--while Austin prints his verse And Satan's sorrows fill Corelli's purse, Must I not write lest haply some K.C.

To flatter Tennyson should sneer at me?

Or must the Angels of the Darker Ink No longer tell the public what to think-- Must lectures and reviewing all be stayed Until they're licensed by the Board of Trade?

Prepare for rhyme--I'll risk it--bite or bark I'll stop the press for neither Gosse nor Clarke.

O sport most n.o.ble, when two c.o.c.ks engage With equal blindness and with equal rage!

When each, intent to pick the other's eye, Sees not the feathers from himself that fly, And, fired to scorch his rival's every bone, Ignores the inward heat that grills his own; Until self-plucked, self-spitted and self-roast, Each to the other serves himself on toast.

But stay, but stay, you've pitched the key, my Muse, A semi-tone too low for great Reviews;

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Such penny whistling suits the c.o.c.kpit's hum, But here's a scene deserves the biggest drum.

Behold where high above the clamorous town The vast Cathedral-towers in peace look down: Hark to the entering crowd's incessant tread-- They bring their homage to the mighty dead.

Who in silk gown and fullest-bottomed wig Approaches yonder, with emotion big?