hung:--
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doomed by himself, so young?

Yes, Honour calls!--with strength like steel
He put the vision by:
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
An English lad must die!
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent,
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink
To his red grave he went.

Vain, mightiest fleets of iron framed;
Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untamed,
The strong heart of her sons!
So, let his name through Europe ring--
A man of mean estate
Who died, as firm as Sparta's king,
Because his soul was great.

F. H. Doyle

HONOURABLE TOIL

Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman, that,
with earth-made Implement, laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her
man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein,
notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the
Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all
weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face
of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and
even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated
Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and
fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and
fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee, too, lay a god-created
Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the
thick adhesions and defacements of Labour: and thy body, like thy soul,
was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty,
be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for
daily bread.

A second man I honour, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling
for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of
Life. Is not he, too, in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony;
revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours,
be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward
endeavour are one; when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman
only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers
Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not
the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have
Guidance, Freedom, Immor