bravest of the brave are at deadlock there,
    (Highlanders! march! by the right!)
There are bullets by the hundred buzzing in the air,
There are bonny lads lying on the hillside bare;
But the Gordons know what the Gordons dare
  When they hear the pipers playing!

The happiest English heart today
    (Gay goes the Gordon to a fight)
Is the heart of the Colonel, hide it as he may;
    (Steady there! steady on the right!)
He sees his work and he sees his way,
He knows his time and the word to say,
And he's thinking of the tune that the Gordons play
  When he sets the pipers playing.

Rising, roaring, rushing like the tide,
    (Gay goes the Gordon to a fight)
They're up through the fire-zone, not be be denied;
    (Bayonets! and charge! by the right!)
Thirty bullets straight where the rest went wide,
And thirty lads are lying on the bare hillside;
But they passed in the hour of the Gordons' pride,
  To the skirl of the pipers' playing.

He Fell Among Thieves

"Ye have robbed," said he, "ye have slaughtered and made an end,
  Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead:
What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?"
  "Blood for our blood," they said.

He laughed: "If one may settle the score for five,
  I am ready; but let the reckoning stand til day:
I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive."
  "You shall die at dawn," said they.

He flung his empty revolver down the slope,
  He climbed alone to the Eastward edge of the trees;
All night long in a dream untroubled of hope
  He brooded, clasping his knees.

He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills
  The ravine where the Yassin river sullenly flows;
He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills,
  Or the far Afghan snows.

He saw the April noon on his books aglow,
  The wistaria trailing in at the window wide;
He heard his father's voice from the terrace below
  Calling him down to ride.

He saw the gray little church across the park,
  The mounds that hid the loved and honoured dead;
The Norman arch, the chancel softly dark,
  The brasses black and red.

He saw the School Close, sunny and green,
  The runner beside him, the stand by the parapet wall,
The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between,
  His own name over all.

He saw the dark wainscot and timbered roof,
  The long tables, and the faces merry and keen;
The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof,
  The Dons on the daïs serene.

He watched the liner's stem ploughing the foam,
  He felt her trembling speed and the thrash of her screw;
He heard the passengers' voices talking of home,
  He saw the flag she flew.

And now it was dawn. He rose strong on his feet,
  And strode to his ruined camp below the wood;
He drank the breath of the morning cool and sweet:
  His murderers round him stood.

Light on the Laspur hills was broadening fast,
  The blood-red snow-peaks chilled to dazzling white:
He turned, and saw the golden circle at last,
  Cut by the Eastern height.

"O glorious Life, Who dwellest in earth and sun,
  I have lived, I praise and adore Thee."
                                            A sword swept.
Over the pass the voices one by one
  Faded, and the hill slept.

Ionicus

With failing feet and shoulders bowed
  Beneath the weight of happier days,
He lagged among the heedless crowd,
  Or crept along suburban ways.
But still through all his heart was young,
  His mood a joy that nought could mar,
A courage, a pride, a rapture, sprung
  Of the strength and splendour of England's war.

From ill-requited toil he turned
  To ride with Picton and with Pack,
Among his grammars inly burned
  To storm the Afghan mountain-track.
When midnight chimed, before Quebec
  He watched with Wolfe till the morning star;
At noon he saw from Victory's deck
  The sweep and splendour of England's war.

Beyond the book his teaching sped,
  He left on whom he taught the trace
Of kinship with the deathless dead,
  And faith in all the Island Race.
He passed: his life a tangle seemed,
  His age from fame and power was far;
But his heart was night to the end, and dreamed
  Of the sound and splendour of England's war.

The Non-Combatant

Among a race high-handed, strong of heart,
Sea-rovers, conquerors, builders in the waste,
He had his birth; a nature too complete,
Eager and doubtful, no man's soldier sworn
And no man's chosen captain; born to fail,
A name without an echo: yet he too
Within the cloister of his narrow days
Fulfilled the ancestral rites, and kept alive
The eternal fire; it may be, not in vain;
For out of those who dropped a downward glance
Upon the weakling huddled at his prayers,
Perchance some looked beyond him, and then first
Beheld the glory, and what shrine it filled,
And to what Spirit sacred: or perchance
Some heard him chanting, though but to himself,
The old heroic names: and went their way:
And hummed his music on the march to death.

Clifton Chapel

This is the Chapel: here, my son,
  Your father thought the thoughts of youth,
And heard the words that one by one
  The touch of Life has turned to truth.
Here in a day that is not far,
  You too may speak with noble ghosts
Of manhood and the vows of war
  You made before the Lord of Hosts.

To set the cause above renown,
  To love the game beyond the prize,
To honour, while you strike him down,
  The foe that comes with fearless eyes;
To count the life of battle good,
  And dear the land that gave you birth,
And dearer yet the brotherhood
  That binds the brave of all the earth—-

My son, the oath is yours: the end
  Is His, Who built the world of strife,
Who gave His children Pain for friend,
  And Death for surest hope of life.
To-day and here the fight's begun,
  Of the great fellowship you're free;
Henceforth the School and you are one,
  And what You are, the race shall be.

God send you fortune: yet be sure,
  Among the lights that gleam and pass,
You'll live to follow none more pure
  Than that which glows on yonder brass:
"Qui procul hinc," the legend's writ,—-
  The frontier-grave is far away—-
"Qui ante diem periit:
  Sed miles, sed pro patriâ."

Vitaï Lampada

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night—-
  Ten to make and the match to win—-
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
  An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
  Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote—-
  "Play up! play up!