SKRINE

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J. E. C. Welldon

CII
THE GENTLE

We come from tower and grange,
 Where the grey woodlands range,
 Folding chivalric halls in ancient ease;
 From Erin’s rain-wet rocks,
 Or where the ocean-shocks
 Thunder between the glimmering Hebrides;
 And many-spired cities grave,
 With terraced riverain hoar lapped by the storied wave.
Taught in proud England’s school,
 Her honour’s knightly rule,
 To do and dare and bear and not to lie,
 With priest’s or scholar’s lore
 Or statesman’s subtle store
 Of garnered wisdom, proved in councils high,
 We serve her bidding here, or far
 Shepherd the imperial flock under an alien star.
Leechcraft of heaven or earth
 We bear to scanted hearth
 And lightless doorway and dim beds of pain:
 With master-craft we steer
 Dusk labour’s march, and cheer
 His blind innumerable-handed train;
 Or in the cannon-shaken air
 Frankly the gentle die that simple men may dare.
The Asian moonbeams fall
 O’er our boys’ graves, and all
 The o’er-watching hills are names of their young glory:
 Sleep the blithe swordsman hands
 Beside red Ethiop sands,
 Or drear uprise of wintry promontory:
 The headstone of a hero slain
 Charms for his Empress-Isle each threshold of her reign.
O for the blood that fell
 So gladly given and well,
 O for all spirits that lived for England’s honour,
 Ere folly ruin or fear
 Her whom these held so dear,
 Ere fate or treason shame the crown upon her,
 Rise, brothers of her knightly roll,
 Close fast our order’s ranks and guard great England whole!
John Huntley Skrine.

CIII
THE MOTHER AND THE SONS

Sons in my gates of the West,
 Where the long tides foam in the dark of the pine,
 And the cornlands crowd to the dim sky-line,
 And wide as the air are the meadows of kine,
 What cheer from my gates of the West?
‘Peace in thy gates of the West,
 England our mother, and rest,
 In our sounding channels and headlands frore
 The hot Norse blood of the northern hoar
 Is lord of the wave as the lords of yore,
 Guarding thy gates of the West.
But thou, O mother, be strong
 In thy seas for a girdle of towers,
 Holding thine own from wrong,
 Thine own that is ours.
 Till the sons that are bone of thy bone,
 Till the brood of the lion upgrown
 In a day not long,
 Shall war for our England’s own,
 For the pride of the ocean throne,
 Be strong, O mother, be strong!’
Sons in my gates of the morn,
 That steward the measureless harvest gold
 And temples and towers of the Orient old
 From the seas of the palm to HimÁlya cold,
 What cheer in my gates of the morn?
‘Fair as our India’s morn
 Thy peace, as a sunrise, is born.
 Where thy banner is broad in the Orient light
 There is law from the seas to HimÁlya’s height,
 For the banner of might is the banner of right.
 Good cheer in thy gates of the morn.’
From the Isles of the South what word?
 True South! long ago, when I called not, it came,
 And ‘England’s are ours’ ran the war-word aflame,
 ‘And a thousand will bleed ere the mother have shame!’
 From my sons of the South what word?
‘Mother, what need of a word
 For the love that outspake with the sword?
 In the day of thy storm, in the clash of the powers,
 When thy children close round thee grown great with the hours,
 They shall know who have wronged thee if ‘England’s be ours.’
 We bring thee a deed for a word.
But thou, O mother, be strong,
 In thy seas for a girdle of towers,
 Holding thine own from wrong,
 Thine own that is ours.
 Till the sons that are bone of thy bone,
 Till the brood of the lion upgrown
 In a day not long,
 Shall war for our England’s own,
 For the pride of the ocean throne,
 Be strong, O mother, be strong!’
John Huntley Skrine.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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