Let gentle ladies lend their cheers,
His conquest’s free from widow’s tears;
Let manly voices swell the strain,
His course is not o’er brother’s slain;
No soldiers scarred and maimed proclaim
A bloody source of all his fame.
His triumph is o’er ancient wrong,
O’er prejudices old and strong,
Time honoured; time dishonouring—
Peace, Justice, Hope, ’tis his to bring.
Children of loyal men! ’tis meet
Your cherub voices fresh and sweet
Should rise to heaven in welcome cheers;
For when in your maturer years
The seed ’tis his blest work to sow
Shall spring up round you—with you grow,
And cover like some sheltering tree
Your future, happier destiny.
Your voices then much deeper grown,
Shall tell to children, then your own,
How Wodehouse and his noble dame
’Midst shouts of infant welcome came;
How ranged like soldiers on the green
You sang “God save our Gracious Queen.”
He comes like meteor bright and bold,
Scorning the track traversed of old
By orbs whose fastly waning light
Is sinking in the realms of night.
He seeks the cradle of the dawn,
Where Freedom’s sun proclaims the morn—
This day we’ll give to joy at least;
This day the light dawns in the East,
And soon beneath its genial ray
North, South, East, West, shall feel ’tis day.
H. W. Bidwell.
Grahamstown, Feb. 1, 1864.
PRECEPTS FOR YOUNG AND OLD.
I’d like to speak a word to you, my pretty, careless child!
I’d learn the spell that daily lures you ’midst the blossoms wild,
I’d join you and the butterflies with which you sport and play,
As innocent, as beautiful, as fairy-like as they.
I’d like to scan the purity that halos your fair brow,
To fathom all the gentle thoughts that through your bosom flow—
But oh! the wish is doubly vain, ’tis not for heart like mine
To enter that pure heaven which forms the fairy land of thine.
I’d like to speak a word with you, my timid blushing maid—
Pausing at every step you take as if you were afraid!
As if by instinct you foresaw the weeds of woe and strife,
That grow up in the pathway of your unseen future life.
Oh! happy, ten times happy, were you could you shun the wild
And rugged waste; and turning back for ever, be a child.
You cannot! then I’d say to you, retain as best you may
The pure and holy freshness of your childhood’s cloudless day!
I’d like to speak a word with you, my bold and wayward youth!
I’d counsel you to cherish in your heart the love of truth;
I’d caution you ’gainst wantonness and arrogance and pride,
And bid you fear your passions more than all the world beside.
I’d have you honour age whose precepts now you hear with scorn,
Remember! we were men, my boy, long, long ere you were born,
Have trodden long ago the path which you have yet to tread,
And now bequeath experience which may serve you when we’re dead.