Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag
has flown.
I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang
for a wisp on the Horn;
I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled
and torn;
I have spread its folds o'er the dying, adrift
in a hopeless sea;
I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave
set free.
* * * * * * * * *
Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
But a soul goes out on the East Wind, that died
for England's sake--
Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid--
Because on the bones of the English, the English flag
is stayed.
* * * * * * * * *
The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed--
The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
What is the flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare;
Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!"
--KIPLING.

"The great Lord Hawke" is Burke's phrase, and is one of the best-earned
epithets in literature. Yet what does the average Englishman to-day
remember of the great sailor who, through the bitter November gales of
1759, kept dogged and tireless watch over the French fleet in Brest,
destroyed that fleet with heroic daring amongst the sands of Quiberon,
while the fury of a Bay of Biscay tempest almost drowned the roar of
his guns, and so crushed a threatened invasion of England?

Hawke has been thrown by all-devouring Time into his wallet as mere
"alms for oblivion"; yet amongst all the sea-dogs who ever sailed
beneath "the blood-red flag" no one ever less deserved that fate.
Campbell, in "Ye Mariners of England," groups "Blake and mighty Nelson"
together as the two great typical English sailors. Hawke stands midway
betwixt them, in point both of time and of achievements, though he had
more in him of Blake than of Nelson. He lacked, no doubt, the dazzling
electric strain that ran through the war-like genius of Nelson.
Hawke's fighting quality was of the grim, dour home-spun character; but
it was a true genius for battle, and as long as Great Britain is a
sea-power the memory of the great sailor who crushed Gentians off
Quiberon deserves to live.

Hawke, too, was a great man in the age of little men. The fame of the
English navy had sunk to the lowest point. I