See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came by.

See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
O there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house.

And see you, after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
O that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul.

And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
O they are the lines the Flint Men made
To guard their wondrous towns.

Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare.

KIPLING: "Puck of Pook's Hill."

THE BATTLE OF QUEENSTON HEIGHTS

The thirteenth of October, 1812, is a day ever to be remembered in
Canada. All along the Niagara river the greatest excitement had
prevailed: many of the inhabitants had removed with their portable
property into the back country; small bodies of soldiers, regulars and
volunteers, were posted in the towns and villages; Indians were roving
in the adjacent woods; and sentinels, posted along the banks of the
river, were looking eagerly for the enemy that was to come from the
American shore and attempt the subjugation of a free, a happy, and a
loyal people.

In the village of Queenston, that nestles at the foot of an eminence
overlooking the mighty waters of Niagara, two companies of the
Forty-ninth Regiment, or "Green Tigers," as the Americans afterwards
termed them, with one hundred Canadian militia, were posted under the
command of Captain Dennis.

When tattoo sounded on the night of the twelfth, the little garrison
retired to rest. All was silent but the elements, which raged furiously
throughout the night. Nothing was to be heard but the howling of the
wind and the sound of falling rain mingled with the distant roar of the
great cataract. Dripping with rain and shivering with cold, the sentries
paced their weary rounds, from time to time casting a glance over the
swollen tide of the river towards the American shore. At length, when
the gray dawn of morning appeared, a wary sentinel descried a number of
boats, filled with armed men, pushing off from the opposi