He is the Reaper, and binds the sheaf, Shall not the season its order keep? Can it be changed by a man’s belief? Millions of harvests still to reap; Will God reward, if I die for a creed, Or will He but pity, and sow more seed? Surely He pities who made the brain, When breaks that mirror of memories sweet, When the hard blow falleth, and never again Nerve shall quiver nor pulse shall beat; Bitter the vision of vanishing joys; Surely He pities when man destroys. Here stand I on the ocean’s brink, Who hath brought news of the further shore? How shall I cross it? Sail or sink, One thing is sure, I return no more; Shall I find haven, or aye shall I be Tossed in the depths of a shoreless sea? They tell fair tales of a far-off land, Of love rekindled, of forms renewed; There may I only touch one hand Here life’s ruin will little be rued; But the hand I have pressed and the voice I have heard, To lose them for ever, and all for a word! Now do I feel that my heart must break All for one glimpse of a woman’s face; Swiftly the slumbering memories wake Odour and shadow of hour and place; One bright ray through the darkening past Leaps from the lamp as it brightens last, Showing me summer in western land Now, as the cool breeze murmureth In leaf and flower--And here I stand In this plain all bare save the shadow of death; Leaving my life in its full noonday, And no one to know why I flung it away. Why? Am I bidding for glory’s roll? I shall be murdered and clean forgot; Is it a bargain to save my soul? God, whom I trust in, bargains not; Yet for the honour of English race, May I not live or endure disgrace. Ay, but the word, if I could have said it, I by no terrors of hell perplext; Hard to be silent and have no credit From man in this world, or reward in the next; None to bear witness and reckon the cost Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost. I must be gone to the crowd untold Of men by the cause which they served unknown, Who moulder in myriad graves of old; Never a story and never a stone Tells of the martyrs who die like me, Just for the pride of the old countree. _Sir Alfred Lyall._ WEBB CCVI THE RESIDENCY CHURCHYARD