R. C. Lehmann

“ Therefore our grateful hearts go forth to thee, Our British note-provider, brave JOHN BRADBURY!
TEETH-SETTING (1914) When the thunder-shaking German hosts are marching over France— Lo, the glinting of the bayonet and the quiver of the lance!— When a rowdy rampant KAISER, stout and mad and middle-aged, Strips his breast of British Orders just to prove that he's enraged; When with fire and shot and pillage He destroys each town and village; When the world is black with warfare, then there's one thing you must do: Set your teeth like steel, my hearties, and sit tight and see it through. ”

“ But even while we pursue these simple pleasures our thoughts are with the great warships in their ceaseless vigil in the North Sea or with the gallant fellows who slipped away under cover of the night and are now taking their place in the fighting line with our French and Belgian friends. England, too, it seems, can perform a great operation of war on sea and land, and can do it with a swiftness, a precision and a silence that no other nation could surpass. ”

“ When you in words of matchless eloquence spoke of the mailed fist and bade your recruits shoot their parents rather than disobey their Kaiser, a humble General like myself could not go far wrong if he supposed that the thought of war was constantly in your Imperial mind. No other nation, I knew, had the purpose of attacking us, and I assumed therefore that if we were to gain the world-power at which we aimed we must be ready to attack other nations. ”

“ When the years have rolled on and you shall have been called away to render an account of what you did on on earth, for what reasons will you be remembered amongst men? Not because you established justice and did good deeds—or even great ones—for your people, but because you plunged the world in war in order to feed your vanity, and laid waste Belgium and shattered the Cathedral of Rheims. ”

“ Nickalls is equally at home at No. 5 in an Eight; and as stroke-oar of a Four or pair—a position from which he invariably steers the boat—he is to my mind unapproachable. He would not himself assert that he was a model of elegance, but for power and endurance, and for the knack of infusing these qualities into the rest of the crew, no man has ever, in my experience, surpassed, and very few indeed have equalled, him. ”

“ Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, Frobenius and a hundred others, from whose writings it can be most easily shown that Germany alone among nations has the power and the will to expand and to rule; that expansion and rule must be accomplished by war, which, far from being a misfortune, is a noble object to be aimed at and not avoided by statesmen; that all other nations are degenerate and must for their own good be crushed by Germany; and that any nation which resists Germany is through that very act an enemy of the human race. ”

“ I own I didn't stand long at bay, But I cast my arrows and bow away, And I cast my coat, and I changed my plan, And forgot the buck, and away I ran— And, oh, but my heart was chill: For still as I ran I heard the bellow Of the terrible slaughtering fierce-eyed fellow Who has made his lair on the gorse-clad summit, the summit of Winter Hill." Then the women talked, as the women will, and the men-folk they talked too Of the raging dragon, The hungry dragon, The dragon of green and blue. ”

“ What pleases me, I may say, as much as anything else, is the wonderful example of generosity and humanity which your army and mine have been able to offer to the world. I shudder to think what would have happened to Belgium, to Germany and to ourselves, had the French, the Russians and the English been victorious. Villages would have been burnt, civilians with their women and children would have been massacred, churches and cathedrals would have been laid in ruins, and whole countries would have been devastated. ”

“ It is not permitted, highly honoured Emperor, that in my sermon I say anything displeasing to your Imperial self. I must not remind you that you are a man like other men, a man liable to weakness and error, swayed by temper, capable, since your position gives you power, of trampling on the on the rights of others in a moment of passion, of confounding justice with your own desires and for an inspiration from Heaven itself. ”

“ But of course the glory of college racing culminates in the May term. Who shall calculate all the forethought, energy, self-denial, and patriotic labour, all the carefully organized skill and patient training which are devoted to the May races; for so they are still called, though they never take place now before June? Every man who rows in his college crew feels that to him personally the traditions and the honour of his college are committed. ”

“ For everyone felt assured that he, Whatever the fate of the rest might be, However few of them might survive, Was certainly safe to stay alive, And was probably bound to deal the blow That would shatter the beast and lay him low, And end the days of their dragon-foe. And all the women-folk egged them on: It was "Up with your heart, and at him, John!" Or "Gurth, you'll bring me his ugly head," Or "Lance, my man, when you've struck him dead, When he hasn't a wag in his fearful tail, Carve off and bring me a blue-green scale." ”

“ Swiftly they pass and dull the edge of grief. You too, resigned at last, may school your mind To miss the comrade whom you cannot find, Never forgetting, but as one who feels The world has secrets which no skill reveals. Henceforth, whate'er the ruthless fates may give, You shall be loved and cherished while you live. Reft of your master, little dog forlorn, To one dear mistress you shall now be sworn, And in her queenly service you shall dwell, At rest with one who loved your master well. ”

“ Happy are those who still dwell in Cambridge courts and follow the delightful labour of the oar! For the rest of us there can only be memories of the time when we toiled round the never-ending Grassy corner, spurted in the Plough, heard dimly the deafening cheers of the crowd at Ditton, and finally made our bump amid the confused roar of hundreds of voices, the booming of fog-horns the screech of rattles, and the ringing of bells. ”

“ When the waves rise high and higher as they toss about together, And the March-winds, loosed and angry, cut your chilly heart in two, Here are eighteen gallant gentlemen who come to face the weather All for valour and for honour and a little bit of blue! Chorus. Oh get hold of it and shove it! It is labour, but you love it; Let your stroke be long and mighty; keep your body on the swing; While your pulses dance a measure Full of pride and full of pleasure. ”

“ In the practice of almost every crew there comes a period, generally about half way through training, when they begin to show the effects of hard work by a certain lassitude and loss of vigour. This, in fact, is not genuine staleness, but is the half-way house to perfect condition. An experienced coach can always detect the signs of it amongst his men. Their tempers will be short, they will begin to mope about the room, and their general manner will betray languor and listlessness, instead of that brisk cheerfulness that one has a right to expect. ”

“ But, bother the boy, here comes our John Munching a piece of currant cake, Who says the lance is a broken rake, And the sword with its keen Toledo blade Is a hoe, and the dinted shield a spade, Bent and useless and rusty-red, In the gardener's silly old lean-to shed. And sometimes, too, when the night comes soon With a great magnificent tea-time moon. Through the nursery-window I peep and see My palace lit for a revelry; And I think I shall try to go there instead Of going to sleep in my dull small bed. But who are these In the shade of the trees That creep so slow In a stealthy row? ”

“ All these semi-coaching remarks, if I may so call them, should be prefaced with the number of the crew to whom they are addressed, for the purpose of calling his attention, and must be used with judgment and tact, for nothing can be more aggravating, not to say maddening, to an oarsman at any time, more especially when fagged in a race, to hear incessantly the possibly high-pitched and monotonous tones of a coxswain. There is only one fault that will excuse him shouting himself hoarse, if he be so disposed, and it is the fault, or rather vice, of one of the crew looking out of the boat ”

“ And now with festal dance and laughter loud Broke in the boyish and intruding crowd; Nor did they fail, Seeing that all the painful throng was sped, To let high mirth prevail, And raise the song of joy for EUCLID dead.
TO POSTUMOUS IN OCTOBER When you and I were younger the world was passing fair; Our days were sped with laughter, our steps were free as air; Life lightly lured us onward, and ceased not to unroll In endless shining vistas a playground for the soul. But now no glory fires us; we linger in the cold, And both of us are weary, and both are growing old ”

“ The oarsman who thus takes his first voyage in a racing-ship, built, as all racing-ships are, without a keel, must remember that her stability, when she contains her crew, is obtained merely by the balance of the oars. Remove the oars, and the boat would immediately roll over to one side or the other, and immerse her crew in the water. With eight bodies and oars in a constant state of movement, the problem of keeping the boat upon an even keel is not an easy one. It can only be solved satisfactorily in one way: There must be absolute harmony in every movement. ”

“ We linger here and droop Beneath the heavy burden of our years, And may not, though we envy, give our lives For England and for honour and for right; But still must wear our weary hours away, While he, that happy fighter, in one leap, From imperfection to perfection borne, Breaks through the bonds that bound him to the earth. Now of his failures is a triumph made; His very faults are into virtues turned; And, reft for ever from the haunts of men, He wears immortal honour and is joined With those who fought for England and are dead. ”

“ Upon its shallow stream future judges and bishops and Parliament-men—not to speak of the great host of minor celebrities and the vaster army of future obscurities—have sought exercise and relaxation; to its unsightly banks their memory still fondly turns wherever their lot may chance to be cast, and still some thousand of the flower of our youth find health and strength in driving the labouring Eights and Fours along its narrow reaches and round its winding corners. ”

“ From lawn to lawn, from path to path pursue The well-loved form that still escapes your view. At every tree some happy memories rise To stir your tail and animate your eyes, And at each turn, with gathering strength endued, Hope, still frustrated, must be still renewed. How should you rest from your appointed task Till chance restore the happiness you ask, Take from your heart the burden, ease your pain, And grant you to your master's side again, Proud and content if but you could beguile His voice to flatter and his face to smile? ”

“ They cannot shift the blame to any don or committee of dons, and, as they must acknowledge themselves responsible, so the necessity of taking steps to restore the fortunes of their club is the more strongly brought home to them. The captain of a Boat Club is its absolute autocrat as regards work and discipline and the selection of his crew. The coach whom he asks to instruct them may possibly be old enough to be his father, but the coach, none the less, defers with an almost filial respect to the captain, through whom all executive orders are issued. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But always remember if you are at all evenly matched, that however bad you feel yourself, your opponent is probably in just as bad a plight. Talking of pace reminds me of how soon even the best scullers tire. In sculling a course against time at Henley, a good man may get to Fawley, the halfway point, in about the same time as a Pair, and yet will be half a minute slower from that point to the finish; and for the last quarter-mile the veriest tiro can out-scull a champion, provided the latter has gone at his best pace throughout. ”

“ For a man may be strong and a man may be young, But he can't put a drag on a Bedmaker's tongue. And, oh, there's a youngster who sits at his ease In the hope, which is vain, that the tongue may run down, With his feet on the grate and a book on his knees, And his cheeks they are smooth and his hair it is brown. Then I sigh myself back to the place where I am From that ramshackle room near the banks of the Cam.
THE LAST STRAW I sing the sofa! It had stood for years, An invitation to benign repose, A foe to all the fretful brood of fears, Bidding the weary eye-lid sink and close. ”

“ When this unison of movements has been attained by long and persevering practice, marred by frequent periods of disappointment, by knuckles barked as the boat rolls and the hands scrape along the gunwale, and by douches of cold water as the oars splash, then, and not till then, may it be said that a crew has got together. ”

“ Yet, oh ye Powers whose rule is set above These fair abodes that ring the firmament, Spirits of Peace and Happiness and Love, And thou, too, mild-eyed Spirit of Content, Ye will not chide if sometimes in her play The child should start and droop her shining head, Turning in meek surmise Her wistful eyes Back tow'rd the dimness of our mortal day And the loved home from which her soul was sped. ”