lippers wing-and-wing that race the Southern wool;
We warn the crawling cargo-tanks of Bremen, Leith and Hull;
To each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea--
The white wall-sided warships or the whalers of Dundee!

Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guard-ports of the Morn!
Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn!
Swift shuttles of an Empire's loom that weave us main to main,
The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back again!

Go, get you gone up-Channel with the sea-crust on your plates;
Go, get you into London with the burden of your freights!
Haste, for they talk of Empire there, and say, if any seek,
The Lights of England sent you and by silence shall ye speak.

The Song of the Dead.

_Hear now the Song of the Dead--in the North by the torn berg-edges--
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped
sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South--in the sun by their skeleton horses,
Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere
river-courses._

_Song of the Dead in the East--in the heat-rotted jungle hollows,
Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof--in the brake of the
buffalo-wallows.
Song of the Dead in the West--in the Barrens, the snow that betrayed
them,
Where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the
grave-mound they made them;
Hear now the Song of the Dead!_

I.

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the skyline where the strange roads go down.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need.
Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.
As the deer breaks--as the steer breaks--from the herd where they
graze,
In the faith of little children we went on our ways.
Then the wood failed--then the food failed--then the last water dried--
In the faith of little children we lay down and died.
On the sand-drift--on the veldt-side--in the fern-scrub we lay,
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.
Follow after--follow after! We have watered the root,
And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit!
Follow after--we are waiting by the trails that we lost
For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.