The Volunteer

"He leapt to arms unbidden,
    Unneeded, over-bold;
His face by earth is hidden,
    His heart in earth is cold.

"Curse on the reckless daring
    That could not wait the call,
The proud fantastic bearing
    That would be first to fall!"

O tears of human passion,
    Blur not the image true;
This was not folly's fashion,
    This was the man we knew.

Henry John Newbolt

Sir Henry John Newbolt was an English poet and author, famous for his ballads such as 'Vitaï Lampada'. He graduated from Oxford and was called to the bar, but he is better remembered for his literary contributions than his legal career. Newbolt served as a government advisor on military and naval literature during World War I. He was knighted in 1915 for his services to literature. Newbolt's work often reflected themes of patriotism and duty.

Henry John Newbolt

The Cicalas: An Idyll

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

The Gay Gordons

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

The School At War

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

He Fell Among Thieves

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

English

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The Non-Combatant

Among a race high-handed, strong of heart,
Sea-rovers, conquerors, builders in the waste,
He had his birth; a nature too complete,
Eager and doubtful, no man's soldier sworn
And no man's chosen captain; born to fail,
A name without an echo: yet he too
Within the cloister of his narrow days
Fulfilled the ancestral rites, and kept alive
The eternal fire; it may be, not in vain;
For out of those who dropped a downward glance
Upon the weakling huddled at his prayers,
Perchance some looked beyond him, and then first
Beheld the glory, and what shrine it filled,
And to what Spirit sacred: or perchance
Some heard him chanting, though but to himself,
The old heroic names: and went their way:
And hummed his music on the march to death.

Henry John Newbolt

The Volunteer

Here lies the clerk who half his life had spent
Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
Thinking that so his days would drift away
With no lance broken in life's tournament:
Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.

And now those waiting dreams are satisfied;
From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;
His lance is broken; but he lies content
With that high hour, in which he lived and died.
And falling thus, he wants no recompense,
Who found his battle in the last resort;
Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.

Herbert Asquith

The Alarm

(1803)
See "The Trumpet-Major"
IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER'S FAMILY WHO WAS A VOLUNTEER DURING THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON



In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.

'Twas hard to realize on
This snug side the mute horizon
That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,
Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes on
A harnessed Volunteer.

In haste he'd flown there
To his comely wife alone there,
While marching south hard by, to still her fears,
For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there
In these campaigning years.

'Twas time...

Thomas Hardy

Ionicus

With failing feet and shoulders bowed
    Beneath the weight of happier days,
He lagged among the heedless crowd,
    Or crept along suburban ways.
But still through all his heart was young,
    His mood a joy that nought could mar,
A courage, a pride, a rapture, sprung
    Of the strength and splendour of England's war.

From ill-requited toil he turned
    To ride with Picton and with Pack,
Among his grammars inly burned
    To storm the Afghan mountain-track.
When midnight chimed, before Quebec
    He watched with Wolfe till the morning star;
At noon he saw from Victory's deck
    The sweep and splendour of England's war.

Beyond the book his teaching sped,
    He left on whom he taught the trace
Of kinship with the deathless dead...

Henry John Newbolt

Our Volunteers.

Where shall we write your names, ye brave!
    Where build for you a monument,
Who lie in many a sylvan grave,
    Stretched half across the continent!
Young, bright and brave, the very flower
    And choice of all we had to give,
    With you what glory ceased to live,--
    Or lives again in hearts of men.
An inspiration and a power!

For when one sunny day in June,
    A sudden war-cry shook the land,
As if from out clear skies at noon
    Had dropped the lightning's deadly brand--
Ah then, while rang our British cheers,
    And pealed the bugle, rolled the drum,
    We saw the Nation rise like one!
    Swift formed the files,--a thousand miles
Of them, our gallant Volunteers!

Deep clanged the bells, the drums did beat,
    And sti...

Kate Seymour Maclean

The Volunteer.

"The clashing of my armor in my ears
Sounds like a passing bell; my buckler puts me
In mind of a bier; this, my broadsword, a pickaxe
To dig my grave."

Thomas Hood