Collected Poems 1897 - 1907, by Henry NewboltNewbolt, Henry John, Sir
General
Collected Poems 1897 - 1907, by Henry Newbolt
Newbolt, Henry John, Sir
English poetry
We are sojourners here as all our fathers were,
As all our children shall be, forgetting and forgot:
The fame of man is a murmur that passeth on the air,
We perish indeed if Thou remember not.
We are sojourners here as all our fathers were,
Strangers travelling down to the land of death:
There is neither work nor device nor knowledge there,
O grant us might for our labour, and to rest in faith.
[Boys.]
In joy, in the joy of the light to be,
[Men.]
O Father of Lights, unvarying and true,
[Boys.]
Let us build the Palace of Life anew.
[Men.]
Let us build for the years we shall not see.
[Boys.]
Lofty of line and glorious of hue,
With gold and pearl and with the cedar tree,
[Men.]
With silence due
And with service free,
[Boys.]
Let us build it for ever in splendour new.
[Men.]
Let us build in hope and in sorrow, and rest in Thee.
NOTES
Drake's Drum.
A state drum, painted with the arms of Sir Francis
Drake, is preserved among other relics at Buckland Abbey, the seat of
the Drake family in Devon.
The Fighting Téméraire.
The two last stanzas have been misunderstood.
It seems, therefore, necessary to state that they are intended to
refer to Turner's picture in the National Gallery of "The Fighting
_Téméraire_ Tugged to her Last Berth."
San Stefano.
Sir Peter Parker was the son of Admiral Christopher
Parker, grandson of Admiral Sir Peter Parker (the life-long friend and
chief mourner of Nelson), and great-grandson of Admiral Sir William
Parker. On his mother's side he was grandson of Admiral Byron, and
first cousin of Lord Byron, the poet. He was killed in action near
Baltimore in 1814, and buried in St. Margaret's, Westminster,
where may be seen the monument erected to his memory by the officers
of the _Menelaus_.
The Quarter-Gunner's Yarn.
This ballad is founded on fragmentary lines
communicated to the author by Admiral Sir Windham Hornby, K.C.B., who
served under Sir Thomas Hardy in 1827.
Væ Victis.
See _Livy_, XXX.,43, _Diodorus Siculus_, XIX., 106.
Seringapatam.
In 1780, while attempting to relieve Arcot, a British
force of three thousand men was cut to pieces by Hyder Ali. Baird,
then a young captain in the 73rd, was left for dead on the field. He
was afterwards, with forty-nine other officers, kept in prison at
Seringapatam, and treated with Oriental barbarity and treachery by
Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo Sahib, Sultans of Mysore. Twenty-three of
the prisoners died by poison, torture, and fever; the rest were
surrendered in 1784. In 1799, at the siege of Seringapatam,
Major-General Baird commanded the first European brigade, and
volunteered to lead the storming column. Tippoo Sahib, with eight
thousand of his men, fell in the assault, but the victor spared the
lives of his sons and forbade a general sack of the city.
Clifton Chapel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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