White Horses
Where run your colts at pasture? Where hide your mares to breed? ‘Mid bergs about the Ice-cap Or wove Sargasso weed; By chartless reef and channel, Or crafty coastwise bars, But most the ocean-meadows
The Pro-Consuls
The overfaithful sword returns the user His heart’s desire at price of his heart’s blood. The clamour of the arrogant accuser Wastes that one hour we needed to make good. This was foretold of
One Viceroy Resigns
So here’s your Empire. No more wine, then? Good. We’ll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away. (You’ll know that fat old fellow with the knife He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,
The Recall
I am the land of their fathers, In me the virtue stays. I will bring back my children, After certain days. Under their feet in the grasses My clinging magic runs. They shall return
The Secret of the Machines
We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine, We were melted in the furnace and the pit We were cast and wrought and hammered to design, We were cut and filed and tooled
Sappers
When the Waters were dried an’ the Earth did appear, (“It’s all one,” says the Sapper), The Lord He created the Engineer, Her Majesty’s Royal Engineer, With the rank and pay of a Sapper!
The Mary Gloster
I’ve paid for your sickest fancies; I’ve humoured your crackedest whim Dick, it’s your daddy, dying; you’ve got to listen to him! Good for a fortnight, am I? The doctor told you? He lied.
Great-Heart
Theodore Roosevelt “The interpreter then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-Heart.” Bunyan’s’ Pilgrim’s Process Concerning brave Captains Our age hath made known For all men to honour, One standeth alone, Of whom,
The Galley-Slave
Oh gallant was our galley from her caren steering-wheel To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel; The leg-bar chafed the ankle and we gasped for cooler air, But no galley
The Holy War
“For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, thatthe Walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse Potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto.” Bunyan’s Holy
In the Matter of One Compass
When, foot to wheel and back to wind, The helmsman dare not look behind, But hears beyond his compass-light, The blind bow thunder through the night, And, like a harpstring ere it snaps, The
Troopin'
Troopin’, troopin’, troopin’ to the sea: ‘Ere’s September come again the six-year men are free. O leave the dead be’ind us, for they cannot come away To where the ship’s a-coalin’ up that takes
The Ballad of the King's Mercy
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told. His mercy fills the Khyber hills his grace is manifold; He has taken toll of the North and the South his glory reacheth
In the Neolithic Age
1895 I the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage For food and fame and woolly horses’ pelt. I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man, And I sang
Christmas in India
Dim dawn behind the tamerisks the sky is saffron-yellow As the women in the village grind the corn, And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow That the Day, the staring