The Young Guard

AGES ago (as to-day they are reckoned)
I was a lone little, blown little fag:
Panting to heel when Authority beckoned,
Spoiling to write for the Uppingham Mag.!
Thirty years on seemed a terrible time then —
Thirty years back seems a twelvemonth or so.
Little I saw myself spinning this rhyme then —
Less do I feel that it's ages ago!
Ages ago that was Somebody's study;
Somebody Else had the study next door.
O their long walks in the fields dry or muddy!
O their long talks in the evenings of yore!
Still, when they meet, the old evergreen fellows
Jaw in the jolly old jargon as though
Both were as slender and sound in the bellows
As they were ages and ages ago!
O but the ghosts at each turn I could show
you! —
Ghosts in low collars and little cloth caps —
Each of 'em now quite an elderly O.U. —
Wiser, no doubt, and as pleasant – perhaps!
That's where poor Jack lit the slide up with
tollies,
Once when the quad was a foot deep in snow —
When a live Bishop was one of the Pollies [2 - Præpostors.] —
Ages and ages and ages ago!
Things that were Decent and things that were
Rotten,
How I remember them year after year!
Some – it may be – that were better forgotten:
Some that – it may be – should still draw a
tear…
More, many more, that are good to remember:
Yarns that grow richer, the older they grow:
Deeds that would make a man's ultimate ember
Glow with the fervour of ages ago!
Did we play footer in funny long flannels?
Had we no Corps to give zest to our drill?
Never a Gym lined throughout with pine panels?
Half of your best buildings were quarry-stone
still?
Ah! but it's not for their looks that you love
them,
Not for the craft of the builder below,
But for the spirit behind and above them —
But for the Spirit of Ages Ago!
Eton may rest on her Field and her River.
Harrow has songs that she knows how to sing.
Winchester slang makes the sensitive shiver.
Rugby had Arnold, but never had Thring!
Repton can put up as good an Eleven.
Marlborough men are the fear of the foe.
All that I wish to remark is – thank Heaven
I was at Uppingham ages ago!

WOODEN CROSSES

(1917)

GO LIVE the wide world over – but when you
come to die,
A quiet English churchyard is the only place to
lie!
I held it half a lifetime, until through war's
mischance
I saw the wooden crosses that fret the fields of
France.
A thrush sings in an oak-tree, and from the old
square tower
A chime as sweet and mellow salutes the idle hour:
Stone crosses take no notice – but the little
wooden ones
Are thrilling every minute to the music of the guns!
Upstanding at attention they face the cannonade,
In apple-pie alinement like Guardsmen on parade:
But Tombstones are Civilians who loll or sprawl
or sway
At every crazy angle and stage of slow decay.
For them the Broken Column – in its plot of
unkempt grass;
The tawdry tinsel garland safeguarded under
glass;
And the Squire's emblazoned virtues, that would
overweight a Saint,
On the vault empaled in iron – scaling red for
want of paint!
The men who die for England don't need it
rubbing in;
An automatic stamper and a narrow strip of tin
Record their date and regiment, their number and
their name —
And the Squire who dies for England is treated
just the same.
So stand the still battalions: alert, austere, serene;
Each with his just allowance of brown earth shot
with green;
None better than his neighbour in pomp or
circumstance —
All beads upon the rosary that turned the fate of
France!