And battle-scarred they come--victorious!
Exultingly we greet them--cleave the sky
With cheers, and fling our banners to the winds;
We raise triumphant songs, and strew their path
To do them homage--bid them ‘Welcome Home!’
We laid our country’s honour in their hands
And sent them forth undoubting. Said farewell
With hearts too proud, too jealous of their fame,
To own our pain. To-day glad tears may flow.
To-day they come again, and bring their gift--
Of all earth’s gifts most precious--trust redeemed.
We stretch our hands, we lift a joyful cry,
Words of all words the sweetest--‘Welcome Home!’
O brave true hearts! O steadfast loyal hearts!
They come, and lay their trophies at our feet;
They show us work accomplished, hardships borne,
Courageous deeds, and patience under pain,
Their country’s name upheld and glorified,
And Peace, dear purchased by their blood and toil.
What guerdon have we for such service done?
Our thanks, our pride, our praises, and our prayers;
Our country’s smile, and her most just rewards;
The victor’s laurel laid upon their brows
And all the love that speaks in ‘Welcome Home!’
Bays for the heroes: for the martyrs, palms.
To those who come not, who ‘though dead yet speak’
A lesson to be guarded in our souls
While the land lives for whose dear sake they died--
Whose lives thrice sacred are the price of Peace,
Whose memory, thrice belovèd thrice revered,
Shall be their country’s heritage, to hold
Eternal pattern to her living sons--
What dare we bring? They, dying, have won all.
A drooping flag, a flower upon their graves,
Are all the tribute left. Already theirs
A Nation’s safety, gratitude and tears,
Imperishable honour, endless rest.
And ye, O stricken hearted! to whom earth
Is dark, though Peace is smiling, whom no pride
Can soothe, no triumph-pæan can console--
Ye surely will not fail them--will not shrink
To perfect now your sacrifice of love?
’Tis yours to stifle sobs and check your tears,
Lest echo of your grief should reach and break
Their hard-won joy in Heaven, where God Himself
Has met and crowned them, and has said ‘Well done!’
_Annie Rothwell Christie._
PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY
CXCV
THEIR TESTAMENT
Why is it that ye grieve, O, weak in faith,
Who turn toward High Heaven upbraiding eyes?
Think ye that God will count your children’s death
Vain sacrifice?
Half-mast your flags? Nay, fly them at the head!
We reap the harvest where we sowed the corn;
See, from the red graves of your gallant dead,
An Empire born!
Do ye not know ye cannot cure a flaw
Unless the steel runs molten-red again:
That men’s mere words could not together draw
Those who were twain?
Do you not see the Anglo-Saxon breed
Grew less than kin, on every continent;
That brothers had forgotten, in their greed,
What ‘brother’ meant?
Do ye not hear from all the humming wires
Which bind the mother to each colony,
How He works surely for our best desires
To weld the free
With blood of freemen into one Grand Whole,
To open all the gates of all the Earth?
Do ye not see your Greater Britain’s soul
Has come to birth?
Do ye not hear above the sighs--the song
From all those outland hearts, which peace kept dumb:--
‘There is no fight too fierce, no trail too long,
When Love cries ‘Come!’’
Can ye beat steel from iron in the sun,
Or crown Earth’s master on a bloodless field?
As Abram offered to his God his son,
Our best _we_ yield.
And God gives answer. In the battle smoke--
Tried in war’s crucible, washed white in tears,
The Saxon heart of Greater Britain woke,
One for all years.
Lift up your eyes! Your glory is revealed!
See, through war’s clouds, the rising of your Sun!
Hear ye God’s voice! _Their testament is sealed
And ye be one!_
_Clive Phillipps-Wolley._
ROBERTS
CXCVI
CANADA
O Child of Nations, giant-limbed,
Who stand’st among the nations now
Unheeded, unadored, unhymned,
With unanointed brow,--
How long the ignoble sloth, how long
The trust in greatness not thine own?
Surely the lion’s brood is strong
To front the world alone!
How long the indolence, ere thou dare
Achieve thy destiny, seize thy fame--
Ere our proud eyes behold thee bear
A nation’s franchise, nation’s name?
The Saxon force, the Celtic fire,
These are thy Manhood’s heritage!
Why rest with babes and slaves? Seek higher
The place of race and age.
I see to every wind unfurled
The flag that bears the Maple-Wreath;
Thy swift keels furrow round the world
Its blood-red folds beneath;
Thy swift keels cleave the furthest seas;
Thy white sails swell with alien gales;
To stream on each remotest breeze
The black smoke of thy pipes exhales.
O Falterer, let thy past convince
Thy future,--all the growth, the gain,
The fame since Cartier knew thee, since
Thy shores beheld Champlain!
Montcalm and Wolfe! Wolfe and Montcalm!
Quebec, thy storied citadel
Attest in burning song and psalm
How here thy heroes fell!
O Thou that bor’st the battle’s brunt
At Queenston and at Lundy’s Lane,--
On whose scant ranks but iron front
The battle broke in vain!--
Whose was the danger, whose the day,
From whose triumphant throats the cheers,
At Chrysler’s Farm, at Chateauquay,
Storming like clarion-bursts our ears?
On soft Pacific slopes,--beside
Strange floods that Northward rave and fall--
Where chafes Acadia’s chainless tide--
Thy sons await thy call.
They wait; but some in exile, some
With strangers housed, in stranger lands;--
And some Canadian lips are dumb
Beneath Egyptian sands.
O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields
Before us; thy most ancient dreams
Are mixed with far Canadian fields
And murmur of Canadian streams.
But thou, my Country, dream not thou!
Wake, and behold how night is done;
How on thy breast, and o’er thy brow,
Bursts the uprising Sun!
_Charles George Douglas Roberts._
CAMPBELL
CXCVII
ENGLAND
England, England, England,
Girdled by ocean and skies,
And the power of a world, and the heart of a race,
And a hope that never dies.
England, England, England,
Wherever a true heart beats,
Wherever the rivers of commerce flow,
Wherever the bugles of conquest blow,
Wherever the glories of liberty grow,
’Tis the name that the world repeats.
And ye who dwell in the shadow
Of the century’s sculptured piles,
Where sleep our century-honoured dead
While the great world thunders overhead,
And far out miles on miles,
Beyond the smoke of the mighty town,
The blue Thames dimples and smiles;
Not yours alone the glory of old,
Of the splendid thousand years,
Of Britain’s might and Britain’s right
And the brunt of British spears.
Not yours alone, for the great world round
Ready to dare and do,
Scot and Celt and Norman and Dane,
With the Northman’s sinew and heart and brain,
And the Northman’s courage for blessing or bane
Are England’s heroes too.
North and south and east and west,
Wherever their triumphs be,
Their glory goes home to the ocean-girt isle
Where the heather blooms and the roses smile
With the green isle under her lee;
And if ever the smoke of an alien gun
Should threaten her iron repose,
Shoulder to shoulder against the world,
Face to face with her foes,
Scot and Celt and Saxon are one
Where the glory of England goes.
And we of the newer and vaster West,
Where the great war banners are furled,
And commerce hurries her teeming hosts,
And the cannon are silent along our coasts,
Saxon and Gaul, Canadians claim
A part in the glory and pride and aim
Of the Empire that girdles the world.
England, England, England,
Wherever the daring heart
By Arctic floe or torrid strand
Thy heroes play their part;
For as long as conquest holds the earth,
Or commerce sweeps the sea,
By orient jungle or western plain,
Will the Saxon spirit be.
And whatever the people that dwell beneath,
Or whatever the alien tongue,
Over the freedom and peace of the world
Is the flag of England flung.
Till the last great freedom is found,
And the last great truth be taught,
Till the last great deed be done
And the last great battle is fought;
Till the last great fighter is slain in the last great fight
And the war-wolf is dead in his den,
England, breeder of hope and valour and might,
Iron mother of men.
Yea, England, England, England,
Till honour and valour are dead,
Till the world’s great cannons rust,
Till the world’s great hopes are dust,
Till faith and freedom be fled,
Till wisdom and justice have passed
To sleep with those who sleep in the many-chambered vast,
Till glory and knowledge are charnelled dust in dust,
To all that is best in the world’s unrest,
In heart and mind you are wed.
While out from the Indian jungle
To the far Canadian snows,
Over the east and over the west,
Over the worst and over the best,
The flag of the world to its winds unfurled,
The blood-red ensign blows.
_William Wilfred Campbell._
CXCVIII
THE WORLD-MOTHER
By crag and lonely moor she stands,
This mother of half a world’s great men,
And kens them far by sea-wracked lands,
Or orient jungle or western fen.
And far out ’mid the mad turmoil,
Or where the desert places keep
Their lonely hush, her children toil,
Or wrapt in wide-world honour sleep.
By Egypt’s sands or western wave,
She kens her latest heroes rest,
With Scotland’s honour o’er each grave,
And Britain’s flag above each breast.
And some at home.--Her mother love
Keeps crooning wind-songs o’er their graves,
Where Arthur’s castle looms above,
Or Strathy storms or Solway raves.
Or Lomond unto Nevis bends
In olden love of clouds and dew;
Where Trossach unto Stirling sends
Greetings that build the years anew.
Out where her miles of heather sweep,
Her dust of legend in his breast,
’Neath agèd Dryburgh’s aisle and keep,
Her Wizard Walter takes his rest.
And her loved ploughman, he of Ayr,
More loved than any singer loved
By heart of man amidst those rare,
High souls the world hath tried and proved;
Whose songs are first to heart and tongue,
Wherever Scotsmen greet together,
And, far-out alien scenes among,
Go mad at the glint of a sprig of heather.
And he her latest wayward child,
Her Louis of the magic pen,
Who sleeps by tropic crater piled,
Far, far, alas! from misted glen;
Who loved her, knew her, drew her so,
Beyond all common poet’s whim;--
In dreams the whaups are calling low,
In sooth her heart is woe for him.
And they, her warriors, greater none
E’er drew the blade of daring forth,
Her Colin under Indian sun,
Her Donald of the fighting North.
Or he, her greatest hero, he
Who sleeps somewhere by Nilus’ sands,
Brave Gordon, mightiest of those free,
Great captains of her fighting bands.
Yea, these and myriad myriads more,
Who stormed the fort or ploughed the main,
To free the wave or win the shore,
She calls in vain, she calls in vain.
Brave sons of her, far severed wide
By purpling peak or reeling foam;
From western ridge or orient side,
She calls them home, she calls them home.
And far, from east to western sea,
The answering word comes back to her:--
‘Our hands were slack, our hopes were free,
We answered to the blood astir;
The life by Kelpie loch was dull,
The homeward slothful work was done,
We followed where the world was full,
To dree the weird our fates had spun.
We built the brig, we reared the town,
We spanned the earth with lightning gleam,
We ploughed, we fought, ’mid smile and frown,
Where all the world’s four corners team.
But under all the surge of life,
The mad race-fight for mastery,
Though foremost in the surgent strife,
Our hearts went back, went back to thee.’
For the Scotsman’s speech is wise and slow,
And the Scotsman’s thought it is hard to ken,
But through all the yearnings of men that go,
His heart is the heart of the northern glen.
His song is the song of the windy moor,
And the humming pipes of the squirling din;
And his love is the love of the shieling door,
And the smell of the smoking peat within.
And nohap how much of the alien blood
Is crossed with the strain that holds him fast,
‘Mid the world’s great ill and the world’s great good,
He yearns to the Mother of men at last.
For there’s something strong and something true
In the wind where the sprig of heather is blown;
And something great in the blood so blue,
That makes him stand like a man alone.
Yea, give him the road and loose him free,
He sets his teeth to the fiercest blast,
For there’s never a toil in a far countrie,
But a Scotsman tackles it hard and fast.
He builds their commerce, he sings their songs,
He weaves their creeds with an iron twist,
And making of laws or righting of wrongs,
He grinds it all as the Scotsman’s grist.
Yea, there by crag and moor she stands,
This mother of half a world’s great men,
And out of the heart of her haunted lands
She calls her children home again.
And over the glens and the wild sea floors
She peers so still as she counts her cost,
With the whaups low calling over the moors,
‘Woe, woe, for the great ones she hath lost.’
_William Wilfred Campbell._
SCOTT
CXCIX
QUEBEC
Fierce on this bastion beats the noon-day sun;
The city sleeps beneath me, old and grey;
On convent roofs the quivering sunbeams play,
And batteries guarded by dismantled gun.
No breeze comes from the northern hills which run
Circling the blue mist of the summer’s day;
No ripple stirs the great stream on its way
To those dim headlands where its rest is won.
What thunders shook these silent crags of yore!
What smoke of battle rolled up plain and gorge
While two worlds closed in strife for one brief span!
What echoes still come ringing back once more!
For on these heights of old God set His forge;
His strokes wrought here the destinies of man.
_Frederick George Scott._
CC
IN MEMORIAM
Growing to full manhood now,
With the care-lines on our brow,
We, the youngest of the nations,
With no childish lamentations,
Weep, as only strong men weep,
For the noble hearts that sleep,
Pillowed where they fought and bled,
The loved and lost, our glorious dead!
Toil and sorrow come with age,
Manhood’s rightful heritage;
Toil our arms more strong shall render,
Sorrow make our heart more tender,
In the heartlessness of time;
Honour lays a wreath sublime--
Deathless glory--where they bled,
Our loved and lost, our glorious dead!
Wild the prairie grasses wave
O’er each hero’s new-made grave;
Time shall write such wrinkles o’er us,
But the future spreads before us
Glorious in that sunset land--
Nerving every heart and hand,
Comes a brightness none can shed,
But the dead, the glorious dead!
Lay them where they fought and fell;
Every heart shall ring their knell,
For the lessons they have taught us,
For the glory they have brought us.
Tho’ our hearts are sad and bowed,
Nobleness still makes us proud--
Proud of light their names will shed
In the roll-call of our dead!
Growing to full manhood now,
With the care-lines on our brow,
We, the youngest of the nations,
With no childish lamentations,
Weep, as only strong men weep,
For the noble hearts that sleep
Where the call of duty led,
Where the lonely prairies spread,
Where for us they fought and bled,
Our ever loved and glorious dead!
_Frederick George Scott._
SHERMAN
CCI
A WORD FROM CANADA
Lest it be said
_One sits at ease
Westward, beyond the outer seas,
Who thanks me not that my decrees
Fall light as love, nor bends her knees
To make one prayer
That peace my latter days may find_,--
Lest all these bitter things be said
And we be counted as one dead,
Alone and unaccredited
I give this message to the wind:
Secure in thy security,
Though children, not unwise are we;
And filled with unplumbed love for thee,--
Call thou but once, if thou wouldst see!
Where the grey bergs
Come down from Labrador, and where
The long Pacific rollers break
Against the pines, for thy word’s sake
Each listeneth,--alive, awake,
And with thy strength made strong to dare.
And though our love is strong as spring,
Sweet is it, too,--as sweet a thing
As when the first swamp-robins sing
Unto the dawn their welcoming.
Yea, and more sweet
Than the clean savour of the reeds
Where yesterday the June floods were,--
Than perfumed piles of new cut fir
That greet the forest-worshipper
Who follows where the wood-road leads.
But unto thee are all unknown
These things by which the worth is shown
Of our deep love; and, near thy throne,
The glory thou hast made thine own
Hath made men blind
To all that lies not to their hand,--
But what thy strength and theirs hath done:
As though they had beheld the sun
When the noon-hour and March are one
Wide glare across our white, white land.
For what reck they of _Empire_,--they,
Whose will two hemispheres obey?
Why shouldst thou not count us but clay
For them to fashion as they may
In London-town?
The dwellers in the wilderness
Rich tribute yield to thee their friend;
From the flood unto the world’s end
Thy London ships ascend, descend,
Gleaning--and to thy feet regress.
Yea, surely they think not at all
Of us, nor note the outer wall
Around thy realm imperial
Our slow hands rear as the years fall;
Which shall withstand
The stress of time and night of doom;
For we, who build, build of our love,--
Not as they built, whose empires throve
And died,--for what knew they thereof
In old Assyria, Egypt, Rome?
Therefore, in my dumb country’s stead,
I come to thee, unheralded,
Praying that Time’s peace may be shed
Upon thine high, anointed head,
--One with the wheat,
The mountain pine, the prairie trail,
The lakes, the thronging ships thereon,
The valley of the blue Saint John,
New France--her lilies,--not alone
Empress, I bid thee, Hail!
_Francis Sherman._
STRINGER
CCII
CANADA TO ENGLAND
Sang one of England in his island home:
‘Her veins are million, but her heart is one;’
And looked from out his wave-bound homeland isle
To us who dwell beyond its western sun.
And we among the northland plains and lakes,
We youthful dwellers on a younger land,
Turn eastward to the wide Atlantic waste,
And feel the clasp of England’s outstretched hand.
For we are they who wandered far from home
To swell the glory of an ancient name;
Who journeyed seaward on an exile long,
When fortune’s twilight to our island came.
But every keel that cleaves the midway waste
Binds with a silent thread our sea-cleft strands,
Till ocean dwindles and the sea-waste shrinks,
And England mingles with a hundred lands.
And weaving silently all far-off shores
A thousand singing wires stretch round the earth,
Or sleep still vocal in their ocean depths,
Till all lands die to make one glorious birth.
So we remote compatriots reply,
And feel the world-task only half begun:
‘We are the girders of the ageing earth,
Whose veins are million, but whose heart is one.’
_Arthur Stringer._
LIVINGSTON
CCIII
THE CANADIAN VOLUNTEERS
Wide are the plains to the north and the westward;
Drear are the skies to the west and the north--
Little they cared, as they snatched up their rifles,
And shoulder to shoulder marched gallantly forth.
Cold are the plains to the north and the westward,
Stretching out far to the grey of the sky--
Little they cared as they marched from the barrack-room,
Willing and ready, if need be, to die.
Bright was the gleam of the sun on their bayonets;
Firm and erect was each man in his place;
Steadily, evenly, marched they like veterans;
Smiling and fearless was every face;
Never a dread of the foe that was waiting them;
Never a fear of war’s terrible scenes;
‘Brave as the bravest,’ was stamped on each face of them;
Half of them boys not yet out of their teens.
Many a woman gazed down at them longingly,
Scanning each rank for her boy as it passed;
Striving through tears just to catch a last glimpse of him,
Knowing that glimpse might, for aye, be the last.
Many a maiden’s cheek paled as she looked at them,
Seeing the lover from whom she must part;
Trying to smile and be brave for the sake of him,
Stifling the dread that was breaking her heart.
Every heart of us, wild at the sight of them,
Beat as it never had beaten before;
Every voice of us, choked though it may have been,
Broke from huzza to a deafening roar.
Proud! were we proud of them? God! they were part of us,
Sons of us, brothers, all marching to fight;
Swift at their country’s call, ready each man and all,
Eager to battle for her and the right.
Wide are the plains to the north and the westward,
Stretching out far to the grey of the sky--
Little they cared as they filed from the barrack-room,
Shoulder to shoulder, if need be, to die.
Was there one flinched? Not a boy, not a boy of them;
Straight on they marched to the dread battle’s brunt--
Fill up your glasses and drink to them, all of them,
Canada’s call found them all at the front.
_Stuart Livingston._
VI
INDIA
DUTT
CCIV
THE HINDU’S ADDRESS TO THE GANGES
The waves are dashing proudly down
Along thy sounding shore;
Lashing, with all the storm of power,
The craggy base of mountain tower,
Of mosque, and pagod hoar,
That darkly o’er thy waters frown,
As if their moody spirit’s sway
Could hush their wild and boist’rous play!
Unconscious roll the surges down,
But not unconscious thou,
Dread Spirit of the rolling flood,
For ages worshipped as a God,
And worshipped even now,
Worshipped, and not by serf or clown,
For sages of the mightiest fame
Have paid their homage to thy name.
Canst thou forget the glorious past,
When mighty as a God,
With hands and heart unfettered yet,
And eyes with slavish tears unwet,
Each sable warrior trod
Thy sacred shore, before the blast
Of Moslem conquest hurried by,
Ere yet the Mogul spear was nigh?
O’er crumbled thrones thy waters glide,
Through scenes of blood and woe;
And crown and kingdom, might and sway,
The victor’s and the poet’s bay,
Ignobly sleep below;
Sole remnant of our ancient pride,
Thy waves survive the wreck of time,
And wanton free as in their prime.
Alas, alas, all round how drear,
How mangled and how torn!
Where are the damsels proud and gay,
Where warriors in their dread array,
‘In Freedom’s temple born?’
Can heroes sleep? Can patriots fear?
Or is the spark for ever gone,
That lights the soul from sire to son?
I gaze upon thy current strong
Beneath the blaze of day;
What conjured visions throng my sight,
Of war and carnage, death and flight!
Thy waters to the Bay
In purple eddies sweep along,
And Freedom shrieking leaves the shrine,
Alas! no longer now divine.
Roll, Gunga, roll in all thy pride
Thy hallowed groves among!
Still glorious thou in every mood,
Thou boast of India’s widowhood,
Thou theme of every song!
Blent with the murmurs of thy tide
The records of far ages lie,
And live, for thou canst never die!
_Shoshee Chunder Dutt._
LYALL
CCV
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
The 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?