Fratri Dilectissimo[7]
W. H. B.
When we were little wandering boys,
And every hill was blue and high,
On ballad ways and martial joys
We fed our fancies, you and I.
With Bruce we crouched in bracken shade,
With Douglas charged the Paynim foes;
And oft in moorland noons I played
Colkitto to your grave Montrose.
The obliterating seasons flow—
They cannot kill our boyish game.
Though creeds may change and kings may go,
Yet burns undimmed the ancient flame.
While young men in their pride make haste
The wrong to right, the bond to free,
And plant a garden in the waste,
Still rides our Scottish chivalry.
Another end had held your dream—
To die fulfilled of hope and might,
To pass in one swift rapturous gleam
From mortal to immortal light—
But through long hours of labouring breath
You watched the world grow small and far,
And met the constant eyes of Death,
And haply knew how kind they are.
One boon the Fates relenting gave—
Not where the scented hill-wind blows
From cedar thickets lies your grave,
Nor ’mid the steep Himálayan snows.
Night calls the stragglers to the nest,
And at long last ’tis home indeed
For your far-wandering feet to rest
Forever by the crooks of Tweed.
In perfect honour, perfect truth,
And gentleness to all mankind,
You trod the golden paths of youth,
Then left the world and youth behind.
Ah no! ’Tis we who fade and fail—
And you from Time’s slow torments free
Shall pass from strength to strength and scale
The steeps of immortality.
Dear heart, in that serener air,
If blessed souls may backward gaze,
Some slender nook of memory spare
For our old happy moorland days.
I sit alone, and musing fills
My breast with pain that shall not die,
Till once again o’er greener hills
We ride together, you and I.
1912