O Lord our God, we are strangers and sojourners here, Our beginning was night, and our end is hid in Thee: Our labour on the earth is hope redeeming fear, In sorrow we build for the days we shall not see. _Boys._ Great is the name Of the strong and skilled, Lasting the fame Of them that build: {214} The tongues of many nations Shall speak of our praise, And far generations Be glad for our days. _Men._ 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, {215} _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. {216} _Epistle_ TO COLONEL FRANCIS EDWARD YOUNGHUSBAND Across the Western World, the Arabian Sea, The Hundred Kingdoms and the Rivers Three, Beyond the rampart of Himalayan snows, And up the road that only Rumour knows, Unchecked, old friend, from Devon to Thibet, Friendship and Memory dog your footsteps yet. Let not the scornful ask me what avails So small a pack to follow mighty trails: Long since I saw what difference must be Between a stream like you, a ditch like me. This drains a garden and a homely field Which scarce at times a living current yield; The other from the high lands of his birth Plunges through rocks and spurns the pastoral earth, Then settling silent to his deeper course Draws in his fellows to augment his force, Becomes a name, and broadening as he goes, Gives power and purity where'er he flows, Till, great enough for any commerce grown, He links all nations while he serves his own. {217}