Hawthorn and Lavender | Page 9

the slave;?Brawling his way to an unhonoured grave--?That was _DICK SAVAGE_! Yet, ere his ghost we raise?For these more decent and less desperate days,?It may be well and seemly to reflect?That, howbeit of so prodigal a sect,?Since it was his to call until the end?Our greatest, wisest Englishman his friend,?'Twere all-too fatuous if we cursed and scorned?The strange, wild creature _JOHNSON_ loved and mourned.
Nature is but the oyster--Art's the pearl:?Our _DICK_ is neither sycophant nor churl.?Not as he was but as he might have been?Had the Unkind Gods been poets of the scene,?Fired with our fancy, shaped and tricked anew?To touch your hearts with love, your eyes with rue,?He stands or falls, ere he these boards depart,?Not as dead Nature but as living Art.
III. ADMIRAL GUINEA
_By W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson_,?_Avenue Theatre_, _Monday_, _November_ 29, 1897.
Spoken by Miss ELIZABETH ROBINS.
Once was an Age, an Age of blood and gold,?An Age of shipmen scoundrelly and bold--?_BLACKBEARD_ and _AVORY_, _SINGLETON_, _ROBERTS_, _KIDD_:?An Age which seemed, the while it rolled its quid,?Brave with adventure and doubloons and crime,?Rum and the Ebony Trade: when, time on time,?Real Pirates, right Sea-Highwaymen, could mock?The carrion strung at _EXECUTION DOCK_;?And the trim Slaver, with her raking rig,?Her cloud of sails, her spars superb and trig,?Held, in a villainous ecstasy of gain,?Her musky course from _BENIN_ to the _MAIN_,?And back again for niggers:
When, in fine,?Some thought that _EDEN_ bloomed across the Line,?And some, like _COWPER'S NEWTON_, lived to tell?That through those parallels ran the road to Hell.
Once was a pair of Friends, who loved to chance?Their feet in any by-way of Romance:?They, like two vagabond schoolboys, unafraid?Of stark impossibilities, essayed?To make these Penitent and Impenitent Thieves,?These _PEWS_ and _GAUNTS_, each man of them with his sheaves Of humour, passion, cruelty, tyranny, life,?Fit shadows for the boards; till in the strife?Of dream with dream, their Slaver-Saint came true,?And their Blind Pirate, their resurgent _PEW_?(A figure of deadly farce in his new birth),?Tap-tapped his way from _ORCUS_ back to earth;?And so, their Lover and his Lass made one,?In their best prose this _Admiral_ here was done.
One of this Pair sleeps till the crack of doom?Where the great ocean-rollers plunge and boom:?The other waits and wonders what his Friend,?Dead now, and deaf, and silent, were the end?Revealed to his rare spirit, would find to say?If you, his lovers, loved him for this Play.
IV. EPICEDIA
TWO DAYS?(_February_ 15--_September_ 28, 1894)
_To_ V. G.
That day we brought our Beautiful One to lie?In the green peace within your gates, he came?To give us greeting, boyish and kind and shy,?And, stricken as we were, we blessed his name:?Yet, like the Creature of Light that had been ours,?Soon of the sweet Earth disinherited,?He too must join, even with the Year's old flowers,?The unanswering generations of the Dead.?So stand we friends for you, who stood our friend?Through him that day; for now through him you know?That though where love was, love is till the end,?Love, turned of death to longing, like a foe,
Strikes: when the ruined heart goes forth to crave?Mercy of the high, austere, unpitying Grave.
IN MEMORIAM?THOMAS EDWARD BROWN
(_Ob. October_ 30, 1897)
He looked half-parson and half-skipper: a quaint,?Beautiful blend, with blue eyes good to see,?And old-world whiskers. You found him cynic, saint,?Salt, humourist, Christian, poet; with a free,?Far-glancing, luminous utterance; and a heart?Large as _ST. FRANCIS'S_: withal a brain?Stored with experience, letters, fancy, art,?And scored with runes of human joy and pain.?Till six-and-sixty years he used his gift,?His gift unparalleled, of laughter and tears,?And left the world a high-piled, golden drift?Of verse: to grow more golden with the years,
Till the Great Silence fallen upon his ways?Break into song, and he that had Love have Praise.
IN MEMORIAM?GEORGE WARRINGTON STEEVENS
_London_, _December_ 10, 1869.?_Ladysmith_, _January_ 15, 1900.
We cheered you forth--brilliant and kind and brave.
Under your country's triumphing flag you fell.?It floats, true Heart, over no dearer grave--
Brave and brilliant and kind, hail and farewell!
LAST POST
The day's high work is over and done,?And these no more will need the sun:?Blow, you bugles of _ENGLAND_, blow!?These are gone whither all must go,?Mightily gone from the field they won.?So in the workaday wear of battle,?Touched to glory with _GOD'S_ own red,?Bear we our chosen to their bed.?Settle them lovingly where they fell,?In that good lap they loved so well;?And, their deliveries to the dear _LORD_ said,?And the last desperate volleys ranged and sped,?Blow, you bugles of _ENGLAND_, blow?Over the camps of her beaten foe--?Blow glory and pity to the victor Mother,?Sad, O, sad in her sacrificial dead!
Labour, and love, and strife, and mirth,?They gave their part in this goodly Earth--?Blow, you bugles of _ENGLAND_, blow!--?That her Name as a sun among stars might glow,?Till the dusk of Time, with honour and worth:?That, stung by the lust and the pain of battle,?The One Race ever might starkly spread,?And the One Flag eagle it