arance.

I
Oh, we be master mariners that sail the snorting seas,
Right red-plucked mariners that dare the peril of the storm
But we be old and worn and cold, and far from rest and ease,
And only love and brotherhood can keep our tired hearts warm.

II
We were a noble company in days not long gone by,
And mighty craft our elders sailed to every earthly shore.
Men of worship, and dauntless soul, that feared nor sea nor sky;
But God's hand stilled the valiant hearts, and the masters sail no more.

III
And for awhile, though we be brave and handy of our trade,
We sailed no master-galleon, but wrought in cockboats all,
Slight craft and manned with a single hand; yet many a trip we made,
Though we but crept from port to port with cargoes scant and small.

IV
But on a day of wonder came ashining on the deep,
A royal Splendour, proud with sail, and generous roar of guns;
She passed us, and we gaped and stared.
Her lofty bows were steep,
And deep she rode the waters deep with a weight of countless tons.

V
Her rig was strange, her name unknown, she came we knew not whence,
But on the flag at her peak we read 'The Drums of the Fore and Aft.'
And--I speak for one--my breath came thick and my pulse beat hard and tense,
And we cheered with tears of splendid joy at sight of the splendid craft.

VI
She swept us by; her master came and spoke us from the side;
We knew our elder, though his beard was scarce yet fully grown;
She spanked for home through churning foam with favouring wind and tide,
And while we hailed like mad he sailed, a King, to take his own.

Some men are born rich, and some are born lucky, and some are born both
to luck and riches. Kipling is one of the last. Nature endowed him with
uncommon qualities, and circumstances sent him into the sphere in which
those qualities could be most fortunately exercised. It seems strange
that the great store of treasure which he opened to us should have
been unhandled and unknown so long. His Indian pictures came like a
revelation. It is always so when a man of real genius dawns upon the
world. It was so when Scott showed men and women the jewelled mines of
romance which lay in the highways and byways of homely Scotland. It was
so when Dickens bared the Cockney hearth to the sight of all men. Meg
Merrilies, and Rob Roy, and Edie Ochiltree were all _there_--the wild,
the romantic, the humorous were at the doors of millions of men before
Sco