Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guardports of the Morn!

Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn! Swift shuttles of an Empire's loom that weave us main to

main,

The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back again!

Go, get you gone up-Channel with the sea-crust on your plates;

Go, get you into London with the burden of your freights! Haste, for they talk of Empire there, and say, if any seek, The Lights of England sent you and by silence shall ye speak!

HEAR

THE SONG OF THE DEAD

EAR now the Song of the Dead-in the North by the torn berg-edges

They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped

Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses.

Song of the Dead in the East in the heat-rotted jungle hollows,

Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof in the brake of the buffalo-wallows.

Song of the Dead in the West in the Barrens, the pass

that betrayed them,

Where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the grave-mound they made them;

Hear now the Song of the Dead!

I

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;

We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go

down.

Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the

Need,

Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.

As the deer breaks as the steer breaks from the herd

where they graze,

In the faith of little children we went on our ways.

Then the wood failed- then the food failed

water dried

then the last

In the faith of little children we lay down and died.
On the sand-drift on the veldt-side- in the fern-scrub we

lay,

That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.
Follow after follow after! We have watered the root,
And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit!
Follow after we are waiting, by the trails that we lost,
For the sounds of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.
Follow after follow after for the harvest is sown:
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!

When Drake went down to the Horn
And England was crowned thereby,
'Twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed
Our Lodge our Lodge was born
(And England was crowned thereby!)

Which never shall close again
By day nor yet by night,
While man shall take his life to stake
At risk of shoal or main

(By day nor yet by night)

But standeth even so

As now we witness here,

While men depart, of joyful heart,
Adventure for to know

(As now bear witness here!)

II

We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,

Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead:

We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest, To the shark and the sheering gull.

If blood be the price of admiralty,

Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

There's never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we manned;

There's never an ebb goes seaward now
But drops our dead on the sand

But slinks our dead on the sands forlore,
From the Ducies to the Swin.

If blood be the price of admiralty,

If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid it in!

We must feed our sea for a thousand years,
For that is our doom and pride,

As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind,
Or the wreck that struck last tide

Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef
Where the ghastly blue-lights flare.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' bought it fair!

THE DEEP-SEA CABLES

THE wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from

afar

Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white seasnakes are.

There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.

Here in the womb of the world - here on the tie-ribs of earth Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beatWarning, sorrow, and gain, salutation and mirth

For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.

They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time;

Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the

sun.

Hush! Men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime, And a new Word runs between: whispering, "Let us be one!"

THE SONG OF THE SONS

ONE from the ends of the earth — gifts at an open

door

Treason has much, but we, Mother, thy sons have more! From the whine of a dying man, from the snarl of a wolf-pack

freed,

Mother, be proud of thy seed!
Hear, is our speech so rude?
Judge, are we men of The

Turn, and the world is thine.
Count, are we feeble or few?
Look, are we poor in the land?
Blood?

Those that have stayed at thy knees, Mother, go call them in

We that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our

kin.

Not in the dark do we fight — haggle and flout and gibe; Selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe. Gifts have we only to-day- Love without promise or feeHear, for thy children speak, from the uttermost parts of the sea!

THE SONG OF THE CITIES

BOMBAY

ROYAL and Dower-royal, I the Queen
Fronting thy richest sea with richer hands
A thousand mills roar through me where I glean
All races from all lands.

CALCUTTA

Me the Sea-captain loved, the River built,
Wealth sought and Kings adventured life to hold.
Hail, England! I am Asia - Power on silt,
Death in my hands, but Gold!

MADRAS

Clive kissed me on the mouth and eyes and brow,
Wonderful kisses, so that I became

Crowned above Queens a withered beldame now,
Brooding on ancient fame.

RANGOON

Hail, Mother! Do they call me rich in trade?
Little care I, but hear the shorn priest drone,
And watch my silk-clad lovers, man by maid,
Laugh 'neath my Shwe Dagon.