PUNCH TO THE LIFEBOAT-MEN.
[Illustration]
[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.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25