Classic Poem

(i)

CLIVE AND RHODES

" So much to do," brave heart, " so little done"?
What son of England left a work more grand?
Did that fierce trader-boy who, sword in hand,
Captured the Siren Mistress of the sun
Whom only in dreams great Alexander won? —
While India, Rhodes, from Comorin's belt of sand
To where the guardian Kashmir mountains stand,
Acclaims our Clive, your work is but begun.

For see! — for hear! — how race is trampling race
Where'er the white man's tempered breezes blow! —
Hear England saying, " He won a breathing space
For English lungs where skies of azure glow" —
Hear Freedom saying, " He gave me a brooding place
Where, 'neath the flag I love, my limbs shall grow."
Theodore Watts-Dunton .

(ii)

IN MEMORIAM

CECIL JOHN RHODES

L O , while the dawn of every heart's desires,
Herald of Peace, comes up the sombre sky,
Paling the night's wide ring of smouldering fires, —
He was ordained to die!

His work was Peace, though such should needs be wrought
Only of hideous War's informing breath;
And now another Peace than that he sought
Is his by grace of Death.

Judgement is stayed: so large he seems to loom
Upon the moment's too immediate sight;
The years that lie within the future's womb
Shall weigh his worth aright.

This much we know, that through the shifting scenes,
Triumph or ill-report, his end the same,
He strove to compass, by whatever means,
The patriot's single aim.

This much were granted by his dearest foe —
That hoarded wealth for him possessed no lure,
Who kept from lust of self and worldly show
His private honour pure.

His was the great heart hid in homely guise,
His the imaginative force that reads
The fate of nations clear as other eyes
Foretell to-morrow's needs.

He played with half a continent for stake,
Unmoved alike by present praise or scorn,
Scheming his sanguine projects for the sake
Of peoples yet unborn.

To stretch the bounds of Empire broader still,
To make at last two kindred peoples one —
Such was the labour which, for good or ill,
Dying he left undone.

Time may complete or mar the work he planned;
Himself, beyond the care of earthly fame —
The mountains guard him sleeping in the land
To which he gave his name.

(iii)

THE BURIAL

C. J. R HODES, BURIED IN THE M ATOPPOS ,

When that great Kings return to clay,
Or Emperors in their pride,
Grief of a day shall fill a day,
Because its creature died.
But we — we reckon not with those
Whom the mere Fates ordain,
This Power that wrought on us and goes
Back to the Power again.

Dreamer devout, by vision led
Beyond our guess or reach,
The travail of his spirit bred
Cities in place of speech.
So huge the all-mastering thought that drove —
So brief the term allowed —
Nations, not words, he linked to prove
His faith before the crowd.

It is his will that he look forth
Across the world he won —
The granite of the ancient North —
Great spaces washed with sun.
There shall he patient make his seat
(As when the Death he dared),
And there await a people's feet
In the paths that he prepared.

There, till the vision he foresaw
Splendid and whole arise,
And unimagined Empires draw
To council 'neath his skies,
The immense and brooding Spirit still
Shall quicken and control.
Living he was the land, and dead,
His soul shall be her soul!