Ah, how our hearts leapt forth to you, Oh, brain, that did not gain the gold! Here are the hearts to hail you Lord! You played and lost the game? What then? Whom we in secret reverence so. Your work was waste? Maybe your share Ay, you who win, and you who lose, The homeward track, our love is there, To you, the fame, the stress, the sword, We can but wait, until to us You give yourselves, for our reward. To Whaler's deck and Coral beach, 'Neath alien stars your camp-fires glow, How honored and how dear you are, Laurence Hope [? -1904] Though out of the past they gather, And Grief, in a cloud of banners, While Kings of eternal evil "To fear not sensible failure, Die, driven against the wall!" FAILURES THEY bear no laurels on their sunless brows, Unpraised, unblamed, but whom sad Acheron's flow Monotonously lulls to leaden drowse? These are the Failures. Clutched by Circumstance, Made them as stone for aught of great essay;- Arthur Upson (1877-1908] THE MEN OF OLD I KNOW not that the men of old Of heart more kind, of hand more bold, Of more ingenuous brow: I heed not those who pine for force A ghost of Time to raise, As if they thus could check the course Of these appointed days. Still it is true, and over-true, That I delight to close This book of life self-wise and new, And let my thoughts repose The Men of Old all that humble happiness, h rights, though not too closely scanned, njoyed, as far as known,- h will by no reverse unmanned,— With pulse of even tone, y from to-day and from to-night xpected nothing more, n yesterday and yesternight ad proffered them before. them was life a simple art f duties to be done, ame where each man took his part, race where all must run; attle whose great scheme and scope They little cared to know, tent, as men at arms, to cope -ach with his fronting foe. 2809 at thoughts, great feelings, came to them, ike instincts, unawares: nding their souls' sublimest needs With tasks of every day, y went about their gravest deeds, s noble boys at play.— what if Nature's fearful wound hey did not probe and bare, that their spirits never swooned o watch the misery there, that their love but flowed more fast, heir charities more free, conscious what mere drops they cast to the evil sea. A man's best things are nearest him, Lie close about his feet; It is the distant and the dim That we are sick to greet; For flowers that grow our hands beneath Our hearts must die, except they breathe Yet, Brothers, who up Reason's hill And still restrain your haughty gaze, Remembering distance leaves a haze On all that lies below. Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-1885] DON QUIXOTE BEHIND thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack, Austin Dobson [1840 |