Scathe, and shame, and a waefu' name,

And a weary time and strange,
Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing
Can die, and cannot change.

Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn,
Though sair be they to dree:

But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide,
Mair keen than wind and sea.

Ill may we thole the night's watches,
And ill the weary day:

And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep,

A waefu' gift gie they;

For the sangs they sing us, the sights they bring us,
The morn blaws all away.

On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw,
The burn rins blithe and fain:
There's nought wi' me I wadna gie
To look thereon again.

On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide:
There sounds nae hunting-horn

That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat
Round banks where Tyne is born.

The Wansbeck sings with all her springs,
The bents and braes give ear;

But the wood that rings wi' the sang

I may not see nor hear;

For far and far thae blithe burns are,

And strange is a' thing near.

she sings

The light there lightens, the day there brightens,

The loud wind there lives free:

Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me
That I wad hear or see.

But O gin I were there again,

Afar ayont the faem,

Cauld and dead in the sweet, saft bed

That haps my sires at hame!

We'll see nae mair the sea-banks fair,
And the sweet grey gleaming sky,
And the lordly strand of Northumberland,
And the goodly towers thereby ;

And none shall know but the winds that blow
The graves wherein we lie.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

XCVI

NEW YEAR'S DAY

NEW Year, be good to England.

Bid her name

Shine sunlike as of old on all the sea:

Make strong her soul: set all her spirit free : Bind fast her home-born foes with links of shame More strong than iron and more keen than flame:

Seal up their lips for shame's sake: so shall she Who was the light that lightened freedom be, For all false tongues, in all men's eyes the same.

O last-born child of Time, earth's eldest lord,
God undiscrowned of godhead, who for man
Begets all good and evil things that live,
Do thou, his new-begotten son, implored
Of hearts that hope and fear not, make thy span
Bright with such light as history bids thee give.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.

XCVII

TO WILLIAM MORRIS

TRUTH, winged and enkindled with rapture
And sense of the radiance of yore,
Fulfilled you with power to recapture
What never might singer before-
The life, the delight, and the sorrow

Of troublous and chivalrous years
That knew not of night or of morrow,
Of hopes or of fears.

But wider the wing and the vision
That quicken the spirit have spread
Since memory beheld with derision

Man's hope to be more than his dead.
From the mists and the snows and the thunders
Your spirit has brought for us forth
Light, music, and joy in the wonders
And charms of the North.

The wars and the woes and the glories
That quicken and lighten and rain
From the clouds of its chronicled stories,
The passion, the pride, and the pain,
Where echoes were mute and the token
Was lost of the spells that they spake,
Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken
Of ages that break.

For you, and for none of us other,
Time is not: the dead that must live
Hold commune with you as a brother
By grace of the life that you give.
The heart that was in them is in you,
Their soul in your spirit endures:
The strength of their song is the sinew
Of this that is yours.

Hence is it that life, everlasting
As light and as music, abides

In the sound of the surge of it, casting
Sound back to the surge of the tides,
Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen
Watch, hurtling to windward and lea,
Round England, unbacked of her horsemen,
The steeds of the sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

XCVIII

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY

RAIN came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,

They stepping steadily-only too readily!-

Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.

Great guns were gleaming there

seeming there

living things

Cloaked in their tar cloths, upnosed to the night: Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe,

Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.

Lamplight all drearily, blinking and blearily
Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss,
While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to
them

Not to court peril that honour could miss.

Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded those eyes of

ours,

When at last moved away under the arch

All we loved. Aid for them each woman prayed for them

Treading back slowly the track of their march.

Someone said 'Nevermore will they come! Evermore Are they now lost to us!' Oh, it was wrong! Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways—

Bear them through safely-in brief time or long.

Yet-voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us, Hint, in the night-time, when life-beats are low, Other and graver things. . . . Hold we to braver things

...

Wait we-in trust-what Time's fullness shall

show.

Thomas Hardy.

XCIX

BALLAD OF THE ARMADA

KING Philip had vaunted his claims;
He had sworn for a year he would sack us;
With an army of heathenish names

He was coming to fagot and stack us;
Like the thieves of the sea he would track us,
And scatter our ships on the main ;

But we had bold Neptune to back us-
And where are the galleons of Spain?

His carackes were christened of dames
To the kirtles whereof he would tack us;
With his saints and his gilded stern-frames
He had thought like an egg-shell to crack us;
Now Howard may get to his Flaccus,
And Drake to his Devon again,

And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus-
For where are the galleons of Spain?

Let his Majesty hang to St. James
The axe that he whetted to hack us;
He must play at some lustier games
Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us;
To his mines of Peru he would pack us
To tug at his bullet and chain;

Alas! that his Greatness should lack us!-
But where are the galleons of Spain?

ENVOY

GLORIANA !-the Don may attack us
Whenever his stomach be fain;

He must reach us before he can rack us,
And where are the galleons of Spain?
Austin Dobson.