He fell among Thieves

E have robbed," said he, "ye have slaughtered and made an end,

Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead: What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?"

"Blood for our blood," they said.

He laughed: "If one may settle the score for five,
I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till day:
I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive."
"You shall die at dawn," said they.

He flung his empty revolver down the slope,

He climbed alone to the Eastward edge of the trees; All night long in a dream untroubled of hope He brooded, clasping his knees.

He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills
The ravine where the Yassîn river sullenly flows;
He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills,
Or the far Afghan snows.

He saw the April noon on his books aglow,
The wisteria trailing in at the window wide;
He heard his father's voice from the terrace below
Calling him down to ride.

He saw the grey little church across the park,

The mounds that hide the loved and honoured dead; The Norman arch, the chancel softly dark,

The brasses black and red.

He saw the School Close, sunny

and green,

The runner beside him, the stand by the parapet wall,

The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between,
His own name over all.

He saw the dark wainscot and timbered roof,
The long tables, and the faces merry and keen;
The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof,
The Dons on the daïs serene.

He watched the liner's stem ploughing the foam,
He felt her trembling speed and the thrash of her screw;
He heard her passengers' voices talking of home,

He saw the flag she flew.

And now it was dawn.

He rose strong on his feet,

And strode to his ruined camp below the wood;

He drank the breath of the morning cool and sweet;
His murderers round him stood.

Light on the Laspur hills was broadening fast,

The blood-red snow-peaks chilled to a dazzling white; He turned, and saw the golden circle at last,

Cut by the eastern height.

"O glorious Life, Who dwellest in earth and sun, I have lived, I praise and adore Thee."

A sword swept.

Over the pass the voices one by one

Faded, and the hill slept.

Henry Newbolt.

A Gentleman of Somerset

[In the old burying-ground at Calcutta]

ON this dark, weed-grown wilderness,
Where lie the dead of yesterday,
There sleeps a warrior Englishman-
A servant of "John Company"—
Who, ere his reckless countrymen
Snatched from the reeking tiger jaws
The fateful prize of empery,

Laid down his life, and saw no more
His home in leafy Somerset.

Though one of that stern fellowship-
That unremembered chivalry—
Whose onset shook the sovereignties
And world-old powers of Hindostan,
Yet oft in marchings to and fro
His heart, grown sad unwittingly,
Had whispered of the Severn Sea;
And in the moon-blanched minarets
Had shown, by wistful alchemy,
The tower four-square upon the hill,
Beat grey by all the winds of heaven,
Whose five sweet bells on Sabbath morns
Make music when the village-folk

Come up in hushed societies,
Through lanes of ancient silences,
And primrose-lit obscurities,

To worship God in Somerset.

Now lies he here, dead utterly,
His name by fame unchronicled,

And passed from love and memory;
For dead his warrior comrades are,

And dead his friends in Somerset.

Yet still, methinks, half-wonderingly,
Amidst the voiceless multitudes
Of ghosts that throng the Ganges bank,
Attaining through the centuries
The promised palm of Nothingness,
He stands a pale, stern sentinel;
To God, to England loyal still,
And to himself, as well becomes
A gentleman of Somerset.

W. G. Hole.

Charles's Wain

To a Child

"By this the Northerne wagoner had set
His seven-fold teme behind the stedfast starre
That was in Ocean waves yet never wet,

But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
To all who in the wide deepe wandering arre.'

-Faerie Queene.

N the early spring, as the nights grow shorter,
Some clear cold eve when the clouds are

There you

high,

Just as you're going to bed, my daughter,
Linger, and look at the northern sky;

will see, if the stars you 're wise in, Over the edge of the darkened plain

One by one in the heavens uprising

The seven bright beacons of Charles's Wain.

All the night long you may watch them turning,
Round in their course by the polar star;
Slowly they sink, and at dawn are burning
Low on the line of the world afar.

Often they guide me, by dim tracks wending,
In the evenings late, to an Indian tent,
Or the stars, as I wake, are to earth descending;
Just as they touch it, the night is spent.

Then, as they dip, I may take their warning,
Saddle and ride in the silent air;

Swiftly they vanish, and cometh the morning,
Cometh the day with its noise and glare.

But the Wain's last lustre fitfully glances
O'er shadowy camels, who softly pace,
On the watchman's fire, and the horsemen's lances,
Or a wayside mere with a still wan face.

Thus when you look at the seven stars yonder
Think, nor in years that will come, forget,

Here in the dark how often I wander,

Sleep when they rise, and start as they set.

In the West there is clanging of clocks from the steeple, Ringing of bells and rushing of train;

In the East the journeys of simple people

Are timed and lighted by Charles's Wain.

Sir Alfred Lyall.