when their ranks came marching,
Home again with flashing feet,
Under bays of triumph arching
City ways and City Street;

London, lift to God thanksgiving
For His Gift that passes all--
For thy heroes, dead and living,
Who have made thy City Wall.

FIELD-MARSHAL EARL KITCHENER

(June 13, 1916)

A sheet of foam is our great Soldier's shroud
Beside the desolate Orkney's groaning caves;
And we are desolate and groan aloud
To know his body wandering with the waves
Who when the thunder-cloud of battle hate
Broke o'er us, through it towered, the while he bore
Upon his Titan shoulders a world weight
Of doubt and danger none had brooked before.
For while incredulous friend and foe denied him
Such possible prowess, Honour's blast he blew;
And lo! as if from out the earth beside him,
Army on army into order grew;
Till need at last was none for our retreating,
And back to Belgium and the front of France
We bore, firm gathered for our foe's defeating
Against the sounding of the Great Advance.

Few were his friends, yet closely round him clustered,
But from five million Britons, who at his call
Came uncompelled and round him sternly mustered,
The sighs escape, the silent teardrops fall.

And not alone the Motherland is weeping
Her great dead Captain but, The Seven Seas o'er,
Daughter Dominions sorrow's watch are keeping,
For he was theirs as her's in peace and war.

Yea, strong sage Botha, and that stern Cape Raider
Whom first he fought then bound with friendship's bond--
Each now our own victorious Empire aider--
Lament his loss the sounding deeps beyond.
And India mourns her mightiest Soldier Warden,
Egypt the Sirdar who her desert through

Laid iron lines of vengeance for our Gordon
Till on the Madhi he swept, and struck and slew.
And France, for whom he fought a youthful gallant,
From whose proud breast he drew Fashoda's thorn--
France who with England shared his searching talent,
France like his second mother stands forlorn.

* * * * *

A man of men was he, the steadfast glances
Of whose steel-grey, indomitable eyes
So pierced the mind, behind all countenances,
Crushed were the sophist's arts, the coward's lies.
A man of men but in his greatness lonely--
Undaunted in defeat, in conquest calm,
For God and Country liv