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THE DEATH OF ADMIRAL BLAKE.

(August 17th, 1657.)

Laden with spoil of the South, fulfilled with the glory of achievement,

And freshly crowned with never-dying fame,

Sweeping by shores where the names are the names of the victories of England,

Across the Bay the squadron homeward came.

Proudly they came, but their pride was the pomp of a funeral at midnight,

When dreader yet the lonely morrow looms;

Few are the words that are spoken, and faces are gaunt beneath the torchlight

That does but darken more the nodding plumes.

Low on the field of his fame, past hope lay the Admiral triumphant,
And fain to rest him after all his pain;

Yet for the love that he bore to his own land, ever unforgotten,
He prayed to see the Western hills again.

Fainter than stars in a sky long gray with the coming of the daybreak,

Or sounds of night that fade when night is done,

So in the death-dawn faded the splendour and loud renown of

warfare,

And life of all its longings kept but one.

"Oh! to be there for an hour when the shade draws in beside the

hedgerows,

And falling apples wake the drowsy noon:

Oh! for the hour when the elms grow sombre and human in the

twilight,

And gardens dream beneath the rising moon.

Only to look once more on the land of the memories of childhood, Forgetting weary winds and barren foam:

Only to bid farewell to the combe and the orchard and the moorland, And sleep at last among the fields of home!"

So he was silently praying, till now, when his strength was ebbing faster

The Lizard lay before them faintly blue;

Now on the gleaming horizon the white cliffs laughed along the coast-line,

And now the forelands took the shapes they knew.

There lay the Sound and the Island with green leaves down beside the water,

The town, the Hoe, the masts, with sunset fired—

Dreams! ay, dreams of the dead! for the great heart faltered on

the threshold,

And darkness took the land his soul desired.

A BALLAD OF JOHN NICHOLSON.

It fell in the year of Mutiny,

At darkest of the night,

John Nicholson by Jalandhar came,

On his way to Delhi fight.

And as he by Jalandhar came

He thought what he must do,

And he sent to the Rajah fair greeting,

To try if he were true.

"God grant your Highness length of days,
And friends when need shall be;

And I pray you send your Captains hither,
That they may speak with me."

On the morrow through Jalandhar town
The Captains rode in state;

They came to the house of John Nicholson
And stood before the gate.

The chief of them was Mehtab Singh,
He was both proud and sly;
His turban gleamed with rubies red,
He held his chin full high.

He marked his fellows how they put
Their shoes from off their feet;
"Now wherefore make ye such ado
These fallen lords to greet?

"They have ruled us for a hundred years,

In truth I know not how,

But though they be fain of mastery,

They dare not claim it now."

Right haughtily before them all
The durbar hall he trod,
With rubies red his turban gleamed,
His feet with pride were shod.

They had not been an hour together,
A scanty hour or so,

When Mehtab Singh rose in his place
And turned about to go.

Then swiftly came John Nicholson
Between the door and him,
With anger smouldering in his eyes
That made the rubies dim.

"You are overhasty, Mehtab Singh,”-
Oh, but his voice was low!

He held his wrath with a curb of iron,
That furrowed cheek and brow.

"You are overhasty, Mehtab Singh,
When that the rest are gone,
I have a word that may not wait
To speak with you alone."

The Captains passed in silence forth
And stood the door behind;

To go before the game was played

Be sure they had no mind.

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When Mehtab Singh rode from the gate

His chin was on his breast:

The Captains said, "When the strong command Obedience is best."

STEPHEN PHILLIPS

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MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS blazed suddenly into fame. The conductors of the Academy, realising that there must be contest and emulation-in other words, a sporting interestin whatever is to fix the attention of the British public, determined to lend a sporting interest to literature by entering our living writers, willy-nilly, in a "selling race for one hundred sovereigns. The judges to whom they appealed (I know not on what principle selected) pronounced Mr. Phillips's Poems the most remarkable book of the previous year, and he became, for the moment, almost as illustrious as a successful jockey or a "centurycompiling" cricketer.

He was not a beginner in poetry. He had contributed two or three pieces of no particular note to a booklet entitled Primavera, published at Oxford in 1890; the other contributors being Mr. Laurence Binyon, Mr. Arthur S. Cripps, and Mr. Manmohan Ghose. Then, in 1894, he published what is as yet his longest poem, Eremus. As he has not reprinted it, and makes no allusion to it, on the title-page or elsewhere, in his Poems of 1898, one may almost conclude that he wishes it to be forgotten. It is worthy of a better fate; for if it shows something of the poet's weakness, it gives more than a foretaste of his finest strength. Eremus is a blank-verse rhapsody of some 1300 lines, expounding, in the form of a

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