hing.
Which are more full of fate:
The stars; or those sad eyes?
Which are more still and great:
Those brows; or the dark skies?
Although his whole heart yearn
In passionate tragedy:
Never was face so stern
With sweet austerity.
Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.
Brief life and hapless? Nay:
Through death, life grew sublime.
_Speak after sentence?_ Yea:
And to the end of time.
Armoured he rides, his head
Bare to the stars of doom:
He triumphs now, the dead,
Beholding London's gloom.
Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world's employ:
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His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.
King, tried in fires of woe!
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through the night I go,
Loving thy mournful face.
Yet when the city sleeps;
When all the cries are still:
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.
_Lionel Johnson._
10. TO THE FORGOTTEN DEAD
To the forgotten dead,
Come, let us drink in silence ere we part.
To every fervent yet resolved heart
That brought its tameless passion and its tears,
Renunciation and laborious years,
To lay the deep foundations of our race,
To rear its stately fabric overhead
And light its pinnacles with golden grace.
To the unhonoured dead.
To the forgotten dead,
Whose dauntless hands were stretched to grasp the rein
Of Fate and hurl into the void again
Her thunder-hoofed horses, rushing blind
Earthward along the courses of the wind.
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Among the stars, along the wind in vain
Their souls were scattered and their blood was shed,
And nothing, nothing of them doth remain.
To the thrice-perished dead.
_Margaret L. Woods._
11. DRAKE'S DRUM
Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand mile away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the Island, yarnder lie the ships,
Wi' sailor-lads a-dancin' heel-an'-toe,
An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin',
He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago.
Drake he was a Devon man, an' ruled the Devon seas,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)
Rovin' tho' his death fell, he went wi' heart at ease,
An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymou
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