MR. PUNCH TO THE LIFEBOAT-MEN.
[The President of the Board of Trade has, by command of the QUEEN, conveyed, through the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, to the crews of the lifeboats of Atherfield, Brightstone, and Brooke, Her Majesty's warm appreciation of their gallant conduct in saving the crew and passengers of the steamship Eider.]
Your hand, lad! 'Tis wet with the brine, and the salt spray has sodden your hair,
And the face of you glisteneth pale with the stress of the struggle out there;
But the savour of salt is as sweet to the sense of a Briton, sometimes,
As the fragrance of wet mignonette, or the scent of the bee-haunted limes.
Ay, sweeter is manhood, though rough, than the smoothest effeminate charms
To the old sea-king strain in our blood in the season of shocks and alarms,
When the winds and the waves and the rocks make a chaos of danger and strife;
And the need of the moment is pluck, and the guerdon of valour is life.
That guerdon you've snatched from the teeth of the thundering tiger-maw'd waves,
And the valour that smites is as naught, after all, to the valour that saves.
They are safe on the shore, who had sunk in the whirl of the floods but for you!
And some said you had lost your old grit and devotion! We knew 'twas not true.
The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would not dare,
The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share,
Claim much—oh so much, from rough manhood,—unflinching cool daring in fray,
And selflessness utter, from toilers with little of praise, and less pay.
Her heroes to get "on the cheap" from the rough rank and file of her sons
Has been England's good fortune so long, that the scribblers' swift tongue-babble runs
To the old easy tune without thought. "Gallant sea-dogs and life-savers!" Yes!
But poor driblets of lyrical praise should not be their sole guerdon, I guess.
On the coast, in the mine, at the fire, in the dark city byeways at night,
They are ready the waves, or the flames, or the bludgeoning burglar to fight.
And are we quite as ready to mark, or to fashion a fitting reward
For the coarsely-clad commonplace men who our life and our property guard?
A question Punch puts to the Public, and on your behalf, my brave lad,
And that of your labouring like. To accept your stout help we are glad:
If supply of cheap heroes should slacken, and life-saving valour grow dear—
Say as courts, party-statesmen, or churches—'twould make some exchequers look queer.
Do we quite do our part, we shore-goers? Those lights could not flash through the fog,
And how often must rescuer willing lie idle on land like a log
For lack of the warning of coast-wires from lighthouse or lightship? 'Tis flat
That we, lad, have not done our duty, until we have altered all that.
Well, you have done yours, and successfully, this time at least, and at night.
All rescued. How gladly the last must have looked on that brave "Comet Light,"
As you put from the wave-battered wreck. Cold, surf-buffeted, weary, and drenched,
Your pluck, like the glare from that beacon, flamed on through the dark hours unquenched.
Nor then was your labour at end. There was treasure to save and to land.
Well done, life-boat heroes, once more! Punch is proud to take grip of your hand!
Your QUEEN, ever quick to praise manhood, has spoken in words you will hail,
And 'twere shame to the People of England, if they in their part were to fail.