POETRY.
IN THE OLD BURYING-GROUND AT CALCUTTA.
IN this dark, weed-grown wilderness, Where lie the dead of yesterday, There sleeps a warrior Englishman— A servant of "John Company "- Who, ere his reckless countrymen Snatched from the reeking tiger jaws The fateful prize of empiry, Laid down his life, and saw no more His home in leafy Somerset.
Though one of that stern fellowship— That unremembered chivalry— Whose onset shook the sovereignties And world-old Powers of Hindostan, Yet oft in marchings to and fro His heart, grown sad unwittingly, Had whispered of the Severn Sea ; And in the moon-blanched minarets Had shown, by wistful alchemy, The tower four-square upon the hill, Beat grey by all the winds of heaven, Whose five sweet bells on Sabbath morns Make music when the village-folk Come up in hushed societies, Through lanes of ancient silences, And primrose-lit obscurities, To worship God in Somerset.
Now lies he here, dead utterly, His name by fame unchronicled, And passed from love and memory; For dead his warrior comrades are, And dead his friends in Somerset.
Yet still, methinks, half wonderingly, . Amidst the multitudinous Grey ghosts that throng the Ganges bank, Attaining through the centuries The promised palm of nothingness, He stands a pale, stern sentinel ; To God, to England loyal still, And to himself, as well becomes A gentleman of Somerset. W. G. HOLE.
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