Not swift or rash, when late she lent The sceptres of her West, her East, To one, that ruling has increased Her greatness and her self-content. III Your rule has made the people love Their ruler. Your viceregal days Have added fulness to the phrase Of "Gauntlet in the velvet glove." IV But since your name will grow with Time, Not all, as honouring your fair fame Of Statesman, have I made the name A golden portal to my rhyme: V But more, that you and yours may know From me and mine, how dear a debt We owed you, and are owing yet To you and yours, and still would owe. VI For he[42]--your India was his Fate, And drew him over sea to you-- He fain had ranged her thro' and thro', To serve her myriads and the State,-- VII A soul that, watch'd from earliest youth, And on thro' many a brightening year, Had never swerved for craft or fear, By one side-path, from simple truth; VIII Who might have chased and claspt Renown And caught her chaplet here--and there In haunts of jungle-poison'd air The flame of life went wavering down; IX But ere he left your fatal shore, And lay on that funereal boat, Dying, "Unspeakable" he wrote "Their kindness," and he wrote no more; X And sacred is the latest word; And now the Was, the Might-have-been, And those lone rites I have not seen, And one drear sound I have not heard, XI Are dreams that scarce will let me be, Not there to bid my boy farewell, When That within the coffin fell, Fell--and flash'd into the Red Sea, XII Beneath a hard Arabian moon And alien stars. To question, why The sons before the fathers die, Not mine! and I may meet him soon; XIII But while my life's late eve endures, Nor settles into hueless gray, My memories of his briefer day Will mix with love for you and yours. TO W. E. GLADSTONE We move, the wheel must always move, Nor always on the plain, And if we move to such a goal As Wisdom hopes to gain, Then you that drive, and know your Craft, Will firmly hold the rein, Nor lend an ear to random cries, Or you may drive in vain, For some cry "Quick" and some cry "Slow," But, while the hills remain, Up hill "Too-slow" will need the whip, Down hill "Too-quick," the chain. TO MARY BOYLE (Dedicating "The Progress of Spring.") I "Spring-flowers"! While you still delay to take Your leave of Town, Our elmtree's ruddy-hearted blossom-flake Is fluttering down. II Be truer to your promise. There! I heard Our cuckoo call. Be needle to the magnet of your word, Nor wait, till all III Our vernal bloom from every vale and plain And garden pass, And all the gold from each laburnum chain Drop to the grass. IV