Chorus: Chorus: Chorus: Chorus: Chorus: Then Dian sees a right strange sight In that deep oak-tree hollow, Ay, now his best becomes his worst, And from their tender depths of blue For ah, the stars are kindly! And sometimes, with a shower of rain, With never a grace, the sinner! Yet Bill has grown no thinner! The young moon grows to full and throws And peeps and smiles and passes, Then with her fickle silver flecks Our old black galleon's dreaming decks; 'Twas ever the way with lasses! Ah, Didymus, hast thou won indeed Of mead, thou liest for Jove to sup, This great oak-cup to heaven! The second canto ceased; and, as they raised And suits the third, last canto!" At one draught BLACK BILL'S HONEY-MOON. CANTO THE THIRD. A month went by. We were hoisting sail! Though, laugh as you may at a seaman's tale, How the Sweet, indeed, of the Sour hath need; Chorus: The Chaplain's word of the Air and a Bird; "O, had I the wings of a dove, I would fly To a heaven, of aloes and gall! 66 I have honeyed," he yammers, my nose and mine eye, And it's O, for the sting of a little brown bee, Or to buffet a thundering broad-side sea Chorus: With her mast snapt short, and a list to port But alas, and he thinks of the chaplain's voice "Tis a judgment, may-be, that I stick in this tree; Though I live, though I die, in this honey-comb pie, Chorus: Notes in a nightingale, plums in a pie, He knew not our anchor was heaved from the mud: When a strange sound suddenly froze his blood, A marvellous sound, as of great steel claws Gripping the bark of his tree, Softly ascended! Like lightning ended His honey-comb reverie! Chorus: The honey-comb quivered! The little leaves shivered! Something was climbing the tree! Something that breathed like a fat sea-cook, Or a pirate of fourteen ton! But it clomb like a cat (tho' the whole tree shook) Stealthily tow'rds the sun, Till, as Black Bill gapes at the little blue ring Overhead, which he calls the sky, It is clean blotted out by a monstrous Thing Chorus: O, well for thee, Bill, that this monstrous Thing Still as a mouse lies Bill with his face Low down in the dark sweet gold, While this monster turns round in the leaf-fringed space! As the skipper descending the cabin-stair, Chorus: Solemnly-slowly-cometh this Bear, Chorus: Nearer-nearer-then all Bill's breath And this Bear thinks, "Now am I gripped from beneath And madly Bill clutches his brown bow-legs, And madly this Bear doth hale, With his little red eyes fear-mad for the skies Small wonder a Bear should quail ! To have larded his nose, to have greased his eyes, Pull, Bo'sun! Pull, Bear! In the hot sweet gloom, Pull-out of their gold with a bombard's boom Pull Up! Up! Up! with a scuffle and scramble, This Bear doth go with our Bo'sun in tow Chorus: And this Bear thinks-"Many great bees I know, Chorus: Chorus: All in the gorgeous death of day We had slipped from our emerald creek, A gold-greased figure, but black as a nigger, ""Tis Hylas! "Tis Hylas!" our chaplain flutes, ""Tis Bill! Black Bill, in his old sea-boots! Har-r-rd a-starboard!" And round we came, And a banging boom thro' the rose-red gloom Alive! Not dead! Tho' behind his head Chorus: And our chaplain he sniffs, as Bill finished his tale, It taketh-now, mark!—all the beasts in the Ark, Till the great-blue-sails-be-furled, It taketh-now, mark !-all the beasts in the Ark, "Sack! Sack! Canary! Malmsey! Muscadel!"— In this case we may think that honey and flowers And, as he leaned to Drayton, droning thus, Flit o'er the face of Shakespeare-scarce a smile- As of a cloud that softly veils the sun. IN THE CRYPT OF ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL: 19TH OCTOBER 1910. (A TRIBUTE TO CURZON WYLLIE.) A SILENT company of sombreclad men and women is filing into the cathedral and is gradually filling up the aisles and passages of that portion of the ancient crypt upon whose walls hang tablets commemorating the lives and deaths of those who have served England in India. And those too who are passing in and peopling the dim-lit vacant spaces are all of them men who, whether at home or abroad, have given of their best years, and work we cannot buy, to the service of the Great Dependency; who have experienced some of the joys and many of the sorrows, the high hopes and aching disappointments of India; and who know well, and their women-kind perhaps best of all-since they also serve who stand and wait,—the toll which India takes of her servants and the ungrudged sacrifices her service entails. it is perhaps something of a relief when the silver voices of the choir break unheralded into Barnby's glorious rendering of the 437th Hymn. It is less a song of lamentation than a chorus of triumph, praise of the soldier "faithful, true and bold," who out of strife and tribulation has come into his own again. To this follows the xxivth Psalm, read at Curzon Wyllie's grave and here again at the Memorial raised to him by those who knew and therefore loved him, and wherein we are reminded that it is only those-like our dear friend-who have clean hands and pure hearts who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord and rise up in His holy place. Many of the great ones of England would have willingly pronounced the words whereby it is customary to commend Memorials such as this to the sacred keeping of the Church, but it was surely in every way most fitting that this duty should have been entrusted to the Indian soldier par excellence, the old Field-Marshal, who, himself beloved of all Here in the heart of the crypt there is the hush almost of the grave-side the ceaseless roar of London's streets comes down to us in no more than an almost imperceptible murmur -and to the waiting mourners men, should know best how 1 |