Far, far away, they are bound across the billow, Where the Russian sleeps uneasy on his last plundered pillow; Where the Cross is stained with fraud by the giant evil-doer, And the pale Crescent shines with a steady light and pure; And their coats will be dim with dust, and their bayonets brown with rust, Ere they conquer, as we trust, in the mighty game of war. Peace, peace, peace, with the vain and silly song, That we do no sin ourselves, if we wink at others’ wrong; That to turn the second cheek is _the_ lesson of the Cross, To be proved by calculation of the profit and the loss: Go home, you idle teachers! you miserable creatures! The cannons are God’s preachers, when the time is ripe for war. Peace is no peace, if it lets the ill grow stronger, Merely cheating destiny a very little longer; War, with its agonies, its horrors, and its crimes; Is cheaper if discounted and taken up betimes: When the weeds of wrath are rank, you must plough the poisoned bank, Sow and reap the crop of Peace with the implements of war. God, defend the right, and those that dare to claim it! God, cleanse the earth from the many wrongs that shame it! Give peace in our time, but not the peace of trembling, Won by true strength, not cowardly dissembling; Let us see in pride returning, as we send them forth in yearning, Our Grenadier Guards from earning the trophies of the war. _Sir Franklin Lushington._ PALGRAVE LXXXI ALFRED THE GREAT The Isle of Roses in her Lindian shrine, Athena’s dwelling, gleam’d with golden song Of Pindar, set in gold the walls along, Blazoning the praise of Héraclés divine. --O Poets, who for us have wrought the mine Of old Romance, illusive pearl and gold, Its star-fair maids, knights of heroic mould, Ye lend the rays that on their features shine, Ideal strength and beauty:--But O thou Fair Truth!--to thee with deeper faith we bow; Knowing thy genuine heroes bring with them Their more than poetry. From these we learn What men can be. By their own light they burn As in far heavens the Pleiad diadem. The fair-hair’d boy is at his mother’s knee, A many-colour’d page before them spread, Gay summer harvest-field of gold and red, With lines and staves of ancient minstrelsy. But through her eyes alone the child can see, From her sweet lips partake the words of song, And looks as one who feels a hidden wrong, Or gazes on some feat of gramarye. ‘When thou canst use it, thine the book!’ she cried: He blush’d, and clasp’d it to his breast with pride:-- ‘Unkingly task!’ his comrades cry; in vain; All work ennobles nobleness, all art, He sees; head governs hand; and in his heart All knowledge for his province he has ta’en.