Then Beatty spoke: “Sir! none of my crew, All bravest of brave and truest of true, Is thinking of me so much as of you This grey November morning.” And Nelson replied: “Well, thanks f’ your chat. Forgive my intrusion! I take off my hat And make you my bow ... we’ll leave it at that, This grey November morning.” “TO BURNS” TOAST FOR THE GREENOCK CLUB DINNER, JANUARY, 1914. To Burns! brave Scotia’s laurel’d son Who drove his plough on Helicon-- Who with his Doric rhyme erewhile Taught English bards to mend their style-- And by the humour of his pen Fairly befool’d auld Nickie-ben ... Blithe Robbie Burns! we love thee well Because thou wert so like thysel’, And in full cups with festive cheer We toast thy fame from year to year. POOR CHILD On a mournful day When my heart was lonely, O’er and o’er my thought Conned but one thing only, Thinking how I lost Wand’ring in the wild-wood The companion self Of my careless childhood. How, poor child, it was I shall ne’er discover, But ’twas just when he Grew to be thy lover, With thine eyes of trust And thy mirth, whereunder All the world’s hope lay In thy heart of wonder. Now, beyond regrets And faint memories of thee. Saddest is, poor child, That I cannot love thee. TO PERCY BUCK Folk alien to the Muse have hemm’d us round And fiends have suck’d our blood: our best delight Is poison’d, and the year’s infective blight Hath made almost a silence of sweet sound. But you, what fortune, Percy, have you found At Harrow? doth fair hope your toil requite? Doth beauty win her praise and truth her right, Or hath the good seed fal’n on stony ground? Ply the art ever nobly, single-soul’d Like Brahms, or as you ruled in Wells erewhile, --Nor yet the memory of that zeal is cold-- Where lately I, who love the purer style, Enter’d, and felt your spirit as of old Beside me, listening in the chancel-aisle. _1904._ TO HARRY ELLIS WOOLDRIDGE Love and the Muse have left their home, now bare Of memorable beauty, all is gone, The dedicated charm of Yattendon, Which thou wert apt, dear Hal, to build and share. What noble shades are flitting, who while-ere Haunted the ivy’d walls, where time ran on In sanctities of joy by reverence won, Music and choral grace and studies fair! These on some kindlier field may Fate restore, And may the old house prosper, dispossest Of her whose equal it can nevermore Hold till it crumble: O nay! and the door Will moulder ere it open on a guest To match thee in thy wisdom and thy jest. _October, 1905._ FORTUNATUS NIMIUM I have lain in the sun I have toil’d as I might I have thought as I would And now it is night.