R. C. Lehmann

When the fierce bugle thrilled alarm,
    From lands apart these fighters came.
An equal courage nerved each arm,
    And stirred each generous heart to flame.

Now, greatly dead, they lie below;
    Their creed or language no man heeds,
Since for their colour they can show
    The blood-red blazon of their deeds!

So now your tale of years is done,
Old Fluff, my friend, and you have won,
Beyond our land of mist and rain,
Your way to the Elysian plain,
Where through the shining hours of heat
A cat may bask and lap and eat;
Where goldfish glitter in the streams,
And mice refresh your waking dreams,
And all, in fact, is planned - and that's
Its great delight - to please the cats.

Yet sometimes, too, your placid mind
Will turn to those you've left behind,
And most to one who sheds her tears,
The mistress of your later years,
Who sheds her tears to summon back
Her faithful cat, the white-and-black.

Fluffy, full well you understood
The frequent joys of motherhood -
To lick, from pointed tail to nape,
The mewing litter into shape;
To show, with ...

Like winds that with the setting of the sun
    Draw to a quiet murmuring and cease,
So is her little struggle fought and done;
    And the brief fever and the pain
In a last sigh fade out and so release
The lately-breathing dust they may not hurt again.

Now all that Wilma was is made as naught:
    Stilled is the laughter that was erst our pleasure;
The pretty air, the childish grace untaught,
    The innocent wiles,
    And all the sunny smiles,
The cheek that flushed to greet some tiny treasure;
    The mouth demure, the tilted chin held high,
    The gleeful flashes of her glancing eye;
    Her shy bold look of wildness unconfined,
    And the gay impulse of her baby mind
    That none could tame,
That sent her spinning round,
    A spirit ...

Tested and staunch through many a changing year,
Gelert, his master's faithful hound, lies here.
Humble in friendship, but in service proud,
He gave to man whate'er his lot allowed;
And, rich in love, on each well-trusted friend
Spent all his wealth and still had more to spend.
Now, reft beyond the unfriendly Stygian tide,
For these he yearns and has no wish beside.

Hail and Farewell, dear Brother of the Pen,
Maker of sunshine for the minds of men,
Lord of bright cheer and master of our hearts -
What plaint is fit when such a friend departs?
Not with mere ceremonial words of woe
Come we to mourn - you would not have it so;
But with our memories stored with joyous fun,
Your constant largesse till your life was done,
With quips, that flashed through frequent twists and bends,
Caught from the common intercourse of friends;
And gay allusions gayer for the zest
Of one who hurt no friend and spared no jest.
What arts were yours that taught you to indite
What all men thought, but only you could write!

That wrung from gloom itself a fleeting smile;
Rippled with laughter but refrained from guile;
Led you to prick some bladde...

    He's a boy,
And that's the long and (chiefly) the short of it,
And the point of it and the wonderful sport of it;
    A two-year-old with a taste for a toy,
    And two chubby fists to clutch it and grasp it,
    And two fat arms to embrace it and clasp it;
    And a short stout couple of sturdy legs
    As hard and as smooth as ostrich eggs;
    And a jolly round head, so fairly round
    You could easily roll it,
    Or take it and bowl it
    With never a bump along the ground.

And, as to his cheeks, they're also fat -
I've seen them in ancient prints like that,
    Where a wind-boy high
    In a cloudy sky
    Is puffing away for all he's worth,
    Uprooting the trees
    With a reckless breeze,
    And strewing them over the pati...

RUPERT is dead, and RUPERT was my friend;
"Only surviving son of" - so it ran -
"Beloved husband" and the rest of it.
But six months back I saw him full of life,
Ardent for fighting; now he lies at ease
In some obscure but splendid field of France,
His strivings over and his conflicts done.
He was a fellow of most joyous moods
And quaint contrivings, ever on the point
Of shaking fame and fortune by the hand
But always baulked of meeting them at last.
He could not brook - and always so declared -
The weak pomposities of little men,
Scorned all the tin-gods of our petty world,
And plunged headlong into imprudences,
And smashed conventions with a reckless zeal,
Holding his luck and not himself to blame
For aught that might betide when reckoning came.
Bu...

(THE NOTES FOR £1 AND 10S ARE SIGNED BY JOHN BRADBURY)

    When the Red KAISER, swoll'n with impious pride
    And stuffed with texts to serve his instant need,
    Took Shame for partner and Disgrace for guide,
    Earned to the full the hateful traitor's meed,
    And bade his hordes advance
    Through Belgium's cities towards the fields of France;
    And when at last our patient island race,
    By the attempted wrong
    Made fierce and strong,
    Flung back the challenge in the braggart's face,
    Oh then, while martial music filled the air,
    Clarion and fife and bagpipe and the drum,
    Calling to men to muster, march, and dare,
    Oh, then thy day, JOHN BRADBURY, was come.

    JOHN BRADBURY, the Muse shall fill my strain
    To sing...

Blow, Father Triton, blow your wreathéd horn
    Cheerly, as is your wont, and let the blast
Circle our island on the breezes borne;
    Blow, while the shining hours go swiftly past.
Rise, Proteus, from the cool depths rise, and be
A friend to them that breast your ancient sea.

I shall be there to greet you, for I tire
    Of the dull meadows and the crawling stream.
Now with a heart uplifted and a-fire
    I come to greet you and to catch the gleam
Of jocund Nereids tossing in the air
The sportive tresses of their amber hair.

High on a swelling upland I shall stand
    Stung by the buffets of the wind-borne spray;
Or join the troops that sport upon the sand,
    With shouts and laughter wearing out the day;
Or pace apart and listen to the roar

Tufted and bunched and ranged with careless art
Here, where the paving-stones are set apart,
Alert and gay and innocent of guile,
The little pansies nod their heads and smile.

With what a whispering and a lulling sound
They watch the children sport about the ground,
Longing, it seems, to join the pretty play
That laughs and runs the light-winged hours away.

And other children long ago there were
Who shone and played and made the garden fair,
To whom the pansies in their robes of white
And gold and purple gave a welcome bright.

Gone are those voices, but the others came.
Joyous and free, whose spirit was the same;
And other pansies, robed as those of old,
Peeped up and smiled in purple, white and gold.

For pansies are, I think, the littl...

Our Peter, who's famed as an eater of things,
Is a miniature dragon without any wings.
He can gallop or trot, he can amble or jog,
But he flies like a flash when he's after his prog;
And the slaves who adore him, whatever his mood,
    Say that nothing is fleeter
    Than Peter the eater,
Than Peter pursuing his food.

He considers the garden his absolute own:
It's the place where a digger can bury a bone.
Then he tests his pin-teeth on a pansy or rose,
Spreading ruin and petals wherever he goes;
And his mistress declares, when he's nibbled for hours,
    That nothing is sweeter
    Than Peter the eater,
The resolute eater of flowers.

Having finished his dinner he wheedles the cook,
Picks a coal from the scuttle or tackles a book,
Or devot...

Ho, ruddy-cheeked boys and curly maids,
Who deftly ply your pails and spades,
All you who sturdily take your stand
On your pebble-buttressed forts of sand,
    And thence defy
    With a fearless eye
And a burst of rollicking high-pitched laughter
The stealthy trickling waves that lap you
And the crested breakers that tumble after
To souse and batter you, sting and sap you -
All you roll-about rackety little folk,
Down-again, up-again, not-a-bit brittle folk,
    Attend, attend,
    And let each girl and boy
    Join in a loud "Ahoy!"
For, lo, he comes, your tricksy little friend,
From the clear caverns of his crystal home
Beyond the tossing ridges of the foam:
Planner of sandy romps and wet delights,
Robin the Sea-boy, prince of ocean-sprites,<...

I heard - 'twas on a morning, but when it was and where,
Except that well I heard it, I neither know nor care -
I heard, and, oh, the sunlight was shining in the blue,
A little water singing as little waters do.

At Lechlade and at Buscot, where Summer days are long,
The tiny rills and ripples they tremble into song;
And where the silver Windrush brings down her liquid gems,
There's music in the wavelets she tosses to the Thames.

The eddies have an air too, and brave it is and blithe;
I think I may have heard it that day at Bablockhythe;
And where the Eynsham weir-fall breaks out in rainbow spray
The Evenlode comes singing to join the pretty play.

But where I heard that music I cannot rightly tell;
I only know I heard it, and that I know full well:
I he...