AN ARCTIC EPITAPH

No grave more nobly graced,

No whiter pall than that which wraps the heads Of those who sleep where the lone land outspreads Its ice-bound waste.

These, Mother, were thy sons,

Brood of thy brood, whose seed by sea and land Still man to-day, and in days gone have manned Our English guns.

No mortal foe defied.

What Nature in her silent holds of snow

Hides from all outer ken, they strove to know, And striving-died.

ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY

BARDS of the Future! you that come

With striding march, and roll of drum, What will your newest challenge be To our prose-bound community?

What magic will you find to stir
The limp and languid listener?
Will it be daring and dramatic?
Will it be frankly democratic?

Will Pegasus return again
In guise of modern aeroplane,
Descending from a cloudless blue?
To drop on us a bomb or two?

I know not. Far be it from me
To darken dark futurity;
Still less to render more perplexed
The last vagary, or the next.

Leave Pindus Hill for those who list,
Iconoclast or anarchist-

So be it. "They that break shall pay."
I stand upon the ancient way.

I hold it for a certain thing,
That, blank or rhyming, song must sing;
And more, that what is good for verse,
Need not, by dint of rhyme, grow worse.

I hold that they who deal in rhyme
Must take the standpoint of the time-
But not to catch the public ear,
As mountebank or pulpiteer;

That the old notes are still the new,
If the musician's touch be true-
Nor can the hand that knows its trade,
Achieve the trite and ready-made;

That your first theme is Human Life,
Its hopes and fears, its love and strife-
A theme no custom can efface,
Common, but never commonplace;

For this, beyond all doubt, is plain :
The Truth that pleased will please again,
And move men as in bygone years

When Hector's wife smiled through her tears. 1914 [1913].

THE BALLAD OF THE BEGGAR

THE starlings fly in the windy sky,

The rabbits run out a-row,

The pheasants stalk in the stubble dry,
As I tramp in the evenglow,—
As I tramp, tramp, tramp, and grow
More weary at every stride,

And think, as the riders pass and go-
If I had a horse to ride!

The Farmer trots by on his roadster high,

The Squire on his pony low;

Young Miss sweeps out from the Park-Gate nigh,

And canters away with her beau:

They are proud of themselves, I trow,

But couldn't I too show pride?

And couldn't I too cut a dash and show,
If I had a horse to ride?

The Farmer is four times as fat as I,
The Squire he is blind and slow;

Young Miss has not nearly so bright an eye As Bess at the "Barley Mow";

Ah, wouldn't I cry "Gee-hup, Gee-ho,"
And wouldn't I bang his side,

And wouldn't I teach him to gallop it though,
If I had a horse to ride!

ENVOY.

It was only a Beggar that grumbled so,

As his blistered feet he eyed;

But the cry is a cry that we all of us knowIf I had a horse to ride!