Our world has passed away
In wantonness o'erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone!

Though all we knew depart,
The old Commandments stand:-
"In courage keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand."

Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old:-
"No law except the Sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled."
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.

Comfort, content, delight,
The age's slow-bought gain,
They shrivelled in a night.
Only ourselves remain
To face the naked days
In silent fortitude,

Through perils and dismays
Renewed and re-renewed.

Though all we made depart
The old Commandments stand:-
"In patience keep your heart
In strength lift up your hand."

No easy hope or lies

Shall bring us to our goal,

But iron sacrifice

Of body, will, and soul.

There is but one task for all-
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?

Rudyard Kipling (1865-)

Whereas Kipling's poem grew directly from a time of national crisis, Burns's patriotic challenge was written centuries after the event which it commemorates. At Bannockburn the Scots under Robert Bruce routed the invading army of Edward II. The heroic deeds of Sir William Wallace antedated those of Bruce by a score of years. This entire poem is made a unit by the riming of the fourth lines of the stanzas.

BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY AT
BANNOCKBURN

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,

Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,

Or to Victorie!

Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour;

See approach proud Edward's pow'r-
Chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Free-man stand, or Free-man fa'?
Let him follow me!

By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!—
Let us do or die!

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

The next two poems reflect different phases of the same struggle and afford two glimpses of the same place, Charleston, S. C. The first poem, vigorous and graphic, gives the impressions of a British sailor who made the port on a blockade runner in the last days of the Confederacy. The second is one of the world's finest tributes, at once sweet and elevated, to the heroic dead. Compare also the meters. That of "Romance" is a stanzaic arrangement of the rimeless trochaic tetrameter popularized by Longfellow's Hiawatha.

ROMANCE

"Talk of pluck!" pursued the Sailor,
Set at euchre on his elbow,

"I was on the wharf at Charleston,
Just ashore from off the runner.

"It was gray and dirty weather,
And I heard a drum go rolling,
Rub-a-dubbing in the distance,
Awful dour-like and defiant.

"In and out among the cotton,

Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors,
Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows-
Poor old Dixie's bottom dollar!

"Some had shoes, but all had rifles,
Them that wasn't bald was beardless,
And the drum was rolling 'Dixie,'
And they stepped to it like men, sir!

"Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets,
On they swung, the drum a-rolling,
Mum and sour. It looked like fighting,
And they meant it too, by thunder!"

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

AT MAGNOLIA CEMETERY *

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth

The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years

Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears,

And these memorial blooms.

*This selection from Timrod is reprinted from the Memorial Edition through the courtesy of the holder of the copyright, Johnson Publishing Company.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,

By mourning beauty crowned.

Henry Timrod (1829-1867)

The next two poems afford an opportunity for comparing a Victorian and a modern poet on the same subject. Christina Rossetti shared the inheritance of a family of genius. "Song" is a lyric in the truest sense; the words almost sing themselves. Among living poets Sara Teasdale holds a high place for her shorter lyrics. Note the effect of the three different line-lengths in "I Shall Not Care."

SONG

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;