THE BURIAL

C J. RHODES, buried in the Matoppos, April 10, 1902

WHEN that great Kings return to clay,
Or Emperors in their pride,
Grief of a day shall fill a day,

Because its creature died.

But wc-we reckon not with those
Whom the mere Fates ordain,

This Power that wrought on us and goes
Back to the Power again.

Dreamer devout, by vision led
Beyond our guess or reach,
The travail of his spirit bred
Cities in place of speech.

So huge the all-mastering thought that

drove

So brief the term allowed

Nations, not words, he linked to prove

His faith before the crowd.

It is his will that he look forth
Across the world he won-
The granite of the ancient North-
Great spaces washed with sun.
There shall he patient make his seat
(As when the Death he dared),
And there await a people's feet
In the paths that he prepared.

There, till the vision he forsaw
Splendid and whole arise,
And unimagined Empires draw

To council 'neath his skies,
The immense and brooding Spirit still

Shall quicken and control.
Living he was the land, and dead

His soul shall be her soul!

GENERAL JOUBERT

(DIED MARCH 27th, 1900)

WITH those that bred, with those that loosed the strife,

He had no part whose hands were clear of gain;

But subtle, strong, and stubborn, gave his life To a lost cause, and knew the gift was vain.

Later shall rise a people, sane and great,

Forged in strong fires, by equal war made one; Telling old battles over without hate

Not least his name shall pass from sire to son.

He may not meet the onsweep of our van
In the doomed city when we close the score.
Yet o'er his grave-his grave that holds a man—
Our deep-tongued guns shall answer his once

more !

Copyright, 1900, by Rudyard Kipling

THE PALACE

WHEN I was a King and a Mason-a Master proven and skilled

I cleared me ground for a palace such as a King should build.

I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,

I came on the wreck of a palace such as a King had built.

There was no worth in the fashion-there was no

wit in the plan—

Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings.

ran

Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven

on

"After me.cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have

every stone:

known."

Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well

planned ground-works grew,

I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut

and reset them anew.

Lime I milled of the marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread;

Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.

Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart,

I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder's heart.

As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.

When I was a King and a Mason—in the open noon of my pride,

They sent me a Word from the Darkness-They whispered and called me aside.