II

HASHEEN

“Of British arms, another victory!”
Triumphant words, through all the land’s length sped. 
Triumphant words, but, being interpreted,
Words of ill sound, woful as words can be. 
Another carnage by the drear Red Sea—­
Another efflux of a sea more red! 
Another bruising of the hapless head
Of a wrong’d people yearning to be free. 
Another blot on her great name, who stands
Confounded, left intolerably alone
With the dilating spectre of her own
Dark sin, uprisen from yonder spectral sands: 
Penitent more than to herself is known;
England, appall’d by her own crimson hands.

III

THE ENGLISH DEAD

Give honour to our heroes fall’n, how ill
Soe’er the cause that bade them forth to die. 
Honour to him, the untimely struck, whom high
In place, more high in hope, ’twas fate’s harsh will
With tedious pain unsplendidly to kill. 
Honour to him, doom’d splendidly to die,
Child of the city whose foster-child am I,
Who, hotly leading up the ensanguin’d hill
His charging thousand, fell without a word—­
Fell, but shall fall not from our memory. 
Also for them let honour’s voice be heard
Who nameless sleep, while dull time covereth
With no illustrious shade of laurel tree,
But with the poppy alone, their deeds and death.

IV

GORDON

Idle although our homage be and vain,
Who loudly through the door of silence press
And vie in zeal to crown death’s nakedness,
Not therefore shall melodious lips refrain
Thy praises, gentlest warrior without stain,
Denied the happy garland of success,
Foil’d by dark fate, but glorious none the less,
Greatest of losers, on the lone peak slain
Of Alp-like virtue.  Not to-day, and not
To-morrow, shall thy spirit’s splendour be
Oblivion’s victim; but when God shall find
All human grandeur among men forgot,
Then only shall the world, grown old and blind,
Cease, in her dotage, to remember Thee.

V

GORDON (concluded)

Arab, Egyptian, English—­by the sword
Cloven, or pierced with spears, or bullet-mown—­
In equal fate they sleep:  their dust is grown
A portion of the fiery sands abhorred. 
And thou, what hast thou, hero, for reward,
Thou, England’s glory and her shame?  O’erthrown
Thou liest, unburied, or with grave unknown
As his to whom on Nebo’s height the Lord
Showed all the land of Gilead, unto Dan;
Judah sea-fringed; Manasseh and Ephraim;
And Jericho palmy, to where Zoar lay;
And in a valley of Moab buried him,
Over against Beth-Peor, but no man
Knows of his sepulchre unto this day.