O Lord our God, we are strangers and sojourners here, Our beginning was night, and our end is hid in Thee: Our labour on the earth is hope redeeming fear, In sorrow we build for the days we shall not see.
Great is the name Of the strong and skilled, Lasting the fame Of them that build: The tongues of many nations Shall speak of our praise, And far generations Be glad for our days.
We are sojourners here as all our fathers were, As all our children shall be, forgetting and forgot: The fame of man is a murmur that passeth on the air, We perish indeed if Thou remember not.
We are sojourners here as all our fathers were, Strangers travelling down to the land of death: There is neither work nor device nor knowledge there, O grant us might for our labour, and to rest in faith.
Let us build for the years we shall not see.
Lofty of line and glorious of hue, With gold and pearl and with the cedar tree,
Let us build it for ever in splendour new.
Let us build in hope and in sorrow, and rest in Thee.
A state drum, painted with the arms of Sir Francis Drake, is preserved among other relics at Buckland Abbey, the seat of the Drake family in Devon.
The two last stanzas have been misunderstood. It seems, therefore, necessary to state that they are intended to refer to Turner's picture in the National Gallery of "The Fighting _Téméraire_ Tugged to her Last Berth."
Sir Peter Parker was the son of Admiral Christopher Parker, grandson of Admiral Sir Peter Parker (the life-long friend and chief mourner of Nelson), and great-grandson of Admiral Sir William Parker. On his mother's side he was grandson of Admiral Byron, and first cousin of Lord Byron, the poet. He was killed in action near Baltimore in 1814, and buried in St. Margaret's, Westminster, where may be seen the monument erected to his memory by the officers of the _Menelaus_.
This ballad is founded on fragmentary lines communicated to the author by Admiral Sir Windham Hornby, K.C.B., who served under Sir Thomas Hardy in 1827.
See _Livy_, XXX.,43, _Diodorus Siculus_, XIX., 106.
In 1780, while attempting to relieve Arcot, a British force of three thousand men was cut to pieces by Hyder Ali. Baird, then a young captain in the 73rd, was left for dead on the field. He was afterwards, with forty-nine other officers, kept in prison at Seringapatam, and treated with Oriental barbarity and treachery by Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo Sahib, Sultans of Mysore. Twenty-three of the prisoners died by poison, torture, and fever; the rest were surrendered in 1784. In 1799, at the siege of Seringapatam, Major-General Baird commanded the first European brigade, and volunteered to lead the storming column. Tippoo Sahib, with eight thousand of his men, fell in the assault, but the victor spared the lives of his sons and forbade a general sack of the city.