Disgrace he'd brought on an ancient name;
a smirch on an honoured crest.
He'd blotted the page of glorious fame
that his family once possessed.
Eton he'd left beneath a cloud,
and left in the greatest haste.
He'd proceeded whilst there in revels loud,
life's choicest hours to waste.
Sent down from Oxford next was he,
the result of orgies wild.
He'd filled the cup of vice with glee,
and a noble stock defiled.
A nickname he'd earned by his acts of shame,
'mong comrades of many a bout.
From the broken shell of his own true name
“Rake” Windermere stepped out.
As a fitting end to an angry scene,
he had quitted the family home.
With a tearless eye and a smile serene,
he had started the world to roam.
Still lower he'd sunk than e'er before,
and never a vice he'd shun,
till even his roystering friends of yore
forsook him one by one.
He'd drifted at length with a tourist band
to the land of the war-like Moor.
And there on the dreary desert sand
had disaster attacked the tour.
Approached by a tribe of bandit brand,
the party had turned and fled;
but first a shot, fired by some foolish hand,
had pierced a Moorish head.
Besieged for a week on a mound of stone,
and with water getting low,
the bandit chief had appeared alone
and said: “Thou art free to go,
if thou first deliverest up to me
of thy number any one,
so that True Believer's blood may be
avenged ere tomorrow's sun.”
Each looked at each as he rode away.
Grim silence reigned supreme.
The sun went down, and the moon held sway,
flooding all with silver stream.
Then a muffled form crept down the mound,
with a wistful glance about.
Then with a head erect, but without a sound,
“Rake” Windermere stepped out.