POETRY.

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

October 10th, 1891.

WHY do the great and famed repair

Hitler to-day, and why Rolleth the full-voiced Requiem where Kings, warriors, poets, lie ?

What muffled Sceptre stirs its choir P What wielder of the sword, what sovereign of the lyre ?

For none of these the surging strain, For none of these the prayer : They on their living thrones remain, Clear in the upper air.

Its an hems oaly dirge the dust Of One who was but good, meek, dutiful, and just. In a fair hamlet's beechen shade, Where autumn shadows fall, Sadly by loving hands are laid The coffin and the pall : A silent plot of sacred ground, Where rustic labour rests, and peasants slumber sound_ But though not here the shell, the shroud, Not here the weeping train, The Nation's noblest mourners crowd Into the sombre fane, And with grave lips and looks aver His tomb is in their hearts, no hollow sepulchre.

For, boasting not the birth that sways Or genius that subdues, And scornful of the devious ways Vulgar and sordid use, He rose to serve a suppliant State : Modesty gave him fame, and goodness made him great- No factions counsel stirred or swayed The motions of his mind ; His homely reason asked no aid From arts that blur and blind.

He coined no phrases, smooth or rough ; The simple truth for him was ornament enough.

He never in the fiercest fight Returned a churlish blow, Bat bore him like a noble knight Who spares ignoble foe, And in the melly stood unmoved, Invulnerably armed in probity thrice-proved.

Smiles of the hearth and sweets of home, The rapture, the repose, That walks beside us when we roam Where one's own garden blows, Were to his soul a dearer dower Than all the fumes of fame and all the pomps of power.

Yet these he left, though yoked with age,

At Duty's grave behest,—

The fireside chair, the friendly page, Health, happiness, and rest.

Relinquished peace, when prized the most, To combat England's foes, and perished at his post.

He loved his Country as men love Great things they cannot see, Conscience within, control Above, Magic, and mystery.

He died, unthinking, for a Thought, Gave what he fain had kept, won what he ne'er had sought_ Thereforea grateful Monarch lays Her wreath upon his tomb, And dirgeful notes of prayer and praise Deepen the Abbey's gloom ; And England bares and bows its head O'er what false Fame might deem the undistinguished dead..

He, like the sun that riseth high, Up from a lowly place, Shone kindlier still in mid-day sky Than starting for the race; And, in his setting, leaves behind A glory in the heavens, a gloaming on mankind.

ALFRED AUSTIN._