POETRY.
A TOAST.
THE CIVIL SERVANT—INDIA, AFRICA, THE COLONIES.
GENTLEMEN, charge your glasses : glasses
Flushing with welcome, brim to brim, Oft to your heroes have ye drained; Glasses, I ask, ye charge to him, Who to the end of your Britains beareth Jewels, the best your Britain weareth- Order of life, Rest from strife, Light where the lights of God are dint.
Never a word of his great work cometh Out to the world where the fame-wind blows; Never a w hisper winged with courage Into his desert prison goes.
Lonely and worn, in temper tameless, Reeking of nought so his work be blameless, Bravely he fares, Spent with cares; Linked to a life and death of prose.
Prose, for it is not his to conquer; Prose, for he hath no crown to gain; But to a large and larger labour Following years his life enchain; Drudgery—dull dead-weight—his burden, Frailty, early age, his guerdon ; Life alone, Death unknown, Grave where few of his land have lain.
Yet he is this. When your child-peoples Swirl to a war, he makes it peace ; When to a thousand thousand cometh Panic of death, he bids it cease ; Famine and flood and drought he fighteth, Riot and wrong, the least, he righteth; Fending, holding, Fostering, moulding Men of the hordes ye hold in lease.
Honour him, honour him, then, that hear me; Honour of yours is in his hands.
Think of him where 'mid change and tempest, Hazard and plague, alone, he stands. Spirit of England, cheer him, guard him; Proudly with pride of his work reward him— Sentinel, Judge, Sovereign, drudge, Sower of right in your broad brown lands.
L. P.
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