You, too, I doubt not, from your Lama's hall Can see the Stand above the worn old wall,
Where then they clamoured as our race we sped, Where now they number our heroic dead.* As clear as life you, too, can hear the sound Of voices once for all by "lock-up" bound, And see the flash of eyes still nobly bright But in the "Bigside scrimmage" lost to sight.
Old loves, old rivalries, old happy times, These well may move your memory and my rhymes; These are the Past; but there is that, my friend, Between us two, that has nor time nor end. Though wide apart the lines our fate has traced Since those far shadows of our boyhood raced, In the dim region all men must explore-- The mind's Thibet, where none has gone before-- Rounding some shoulder of the lonely trail We met once more, and raised a lusty hail.
"Forward!" cried one, "for us no beaten track, No city continuing, no turning back: The past we love not for its being past, But for its hope and ardour forward cast: The victories of our youth we count for gain Only because they steeled our hearts to pain, And hold no longer even Clifton great Save as she schooled our wills to serve the State.
Nay, England's self, whose thousand-year-old name Burns in our blood like ever-smouldering flame, Whose Titan shoulders as the world are wide And her great pulses like the Ocean tide, Lives but to bear the hopes we shall not see-- Dear mortal Mother of the race to be."
Thereto you answered, "Forward! in God's name; I own no lesser law, no narrower claim. A freeman's Reason well might think it scorn To toil for those who may be never born, But for some Cause not wholly out of ken, Some all-directing Will that works with men, Some Universal under which may fall The minor premiss of our effort small; In Whose unending purpose, though we cease, We find our impulse and our only peace."
So passed our greeting, till we turned once more, I to my desk and you to rule Indore. To meet again--ah! when? Yet once we met, And to one dawn our faces still are set.
* In the school quadrangle at Clifton, the site from which, upon occasion, the grand stand used to overlook the Close, is now occupied by the Memorial to those Cliftonians who fell in the South African War.