Deep mournful eyes that seck the ground Phe devious path to trace That giant form of Lincoln, crowned By Cromwell's grosser face Coatse rustic garb, of uncouth cut, That masks each mighty limb Its shapeless folds the ready butt Of Europe's jesters trim.
So much the crowd can see; the rest Asks critics clearer-eyed So rough a scabbard leaves unguessed How keen the blade inside The trenchant will, the subtle brain So strangely doomed to wage With Destiny's still climbing main The hopeless war of Age.
Fis kindred are a rugged brood That nurse a dying fire The sons of Calvin's bitter mood, And sterner than their sire.
By faith through trackless deserts steered, "Lost miles of lonely sand, Far from the intruding world they feared, They found their Promised Land, By such grim guardians tutored well His Spartan childhood grew. The wind-trail of the fleet gazelle, The lion's path he knew The camp surprised at dawn, the rush Of feet, the crackling smoke, When on the sleeping laager's hush The sudden Kafr bro!
Nay, once, tis said, when Vaal in flood Had barred the hunters' way, And mid its swollen current stood A wounded buck at hay While some before the brute drew back, And semic before the wave Striding that torrent's foaming tra The merey-stroke he gave.
A stream more rapid and more wide His strength has stemmed since then Called from the plodding team to guide The starker wills of men Chance-prenticed to so new a trade, Unlettered and unschooled, The clod-bred clownish peasant made, less, a realm, and ruled.
Yet though that realm he sti sustains Against an Empire's migh And with untiring skill maintains The so unequal fight He buys his victories all too dear Whose foes hive Time for friend Exch fatal triumph brings more near The inevitable end.
Haply the hoarse-voiced guns must close Who long debate at lust, Ere the young Future can compose Its quarrel with the Past Natheless, our England unashamed May greet a foeman true Of her own stubborn metal framed For She is iron too, Epwanb Sypsey Trtze, in the Spectator.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.