No. For while yet in tower or cot
Your story stirs the pulses' play;
And men forget the sordid lot-
The sordid care, of cities gray;
While yet, beset in homelier fray,
They learn from you the lesson plain
That Life may go, so Honor stay,—
The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

ENVOY

Heroes of old! I humbly lay

The laurel on your graves again;
Whatever men have done, men may,—

The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

Austin Dobson

"IF I SHOULD DIE"

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England's breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives back somewhere the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke

EPILOGUE FROM "ASOLANDO"

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,

When you set your fancies free,

Will they pass to where by death, fools think, imprisoned

Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved So, -Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!

What had I on earth to do

With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel

-Being-who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,-fight on, fare ever

There as here!"

Robert Browning

THE NOBLE NATURE

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear:
A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night,-
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Ben Jonson

LIFE LESSONS

ABOU BEN ADHEM

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:-
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?"-The vision raised its head, And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

Leigh Hunt

"FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT"

Is there, for honest Poverty,
That hangs his head, and a' that!
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!