The Years Between | Page 4

for they have
inherited that good
part,
75
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
65
'This is the State above the Law,
106
To-day, across our fathers' graves,
5
To the Judge of Right and Wrong,
35
Through learned and laborious years,
27
Try as he will, no man breaks wholly loose,
112
'Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad,
42

We're not so old in the Army List,
48
We thought we ranked above the chance of ill,

13
We were all one heart and one race,
6
What boots it on the Gods to call?
58
'Whence comest thou, Gehazi,
109
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, 128 _Who
in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a
land more dear?_ 100
THE ROWERS
1902
(When Germany proposed that England should help her in a naval
demonstration to collect debts from Venezuela.)
The banked oars fell an hundred strong,
And backed and threshed and
ground,
But bitter was the rowers' song
As they brought the
war-boat round.
They had no heart for the rally and roar
That makes the whale-bath
smoke--
When the great blades cleave and hold and leave
As one
on the racing stroke.
They sang:--'What reckoning do you keep,
And steer her by what star,

If we come unscathed from the Southern deep
To be wrecked on a Baltic bar?
'Last night you swore our voyage was done,
But seaward still we go,

And you tell us now of a secret vow
You have made with an open
foe!
'That we must lie off a lightless coast
And haul and back and veer,

At the will of the breed that have wronged us most
For a year and a

year and a year!
'There was never a shame in Christendie
They laid not to our door--

And you say we must take the winter sea
And sail with them once
more?
'Look South! The gale is scarce o'erpast
That stripped and laid us
down,
When we stood forth but they stood fast
And prayed to see
us drown
'Our dead they mocked are scarcely cold,
Our wounds are bleeding
yet--
And you tell us now that our strength is sold
To help them
press for a debt'
''Neath all the flags of all mankind
That use upon the seas,
Was
there no other fleet to find
That you strike hands with these?
'Of evil times that men can choose
On evil fate to fall,
What
brooding Judgment let you loose
To