Chapter II

A poor old man
Who has no bread,
He nothing can
To get a bed.

He has a cough,
Bad boots he has;
He takes them off
Upon the grass.

He does not eat
In cosy inns
But keeps his meat
In salmon tins.

No oven hot,
No frying-pan;
Thank God I’m not
That poor old man.

No. 3. SIR HENRY NEWBOLT

It was eight bells in the forenoon and hammocks running sleek
(_It’s a fair sea flowing from the West_),
When the little Commodore came a-sailing up the Creek
(_Heave Ho! I think you’ll know the rest_).
Thunder in the halyards and horses leaping high,
Blake and Drake and Nelson are listenin’ where they lie,
Four and twenty blackbirds a-bakin’ in a pie,
And the _Pegasus_ came waltzing from the West.

Now the little Commodore sat steady on his keel
(_It’s a fair sea flowing from the West_),
A heart as stout as concrete reinforced with steel
(_Heave Ho! I think you’ll know the rest_).
Swinging are the scuppers, hark, the rudder snores,
Plugging at the Frenchmen, downing ’em by scores.
Porto Rico, Vera Cruz, and also the Azores,
And the _Pegasus_ came waltzing from the West.

So three cheers more for the little Commodore
(_It’s a fair sea flowing from the West_).
I tell you so again as I’ve told you so before
(_Heigh Ho! I think you know the rest_).
Aged is the Motherland, old but she is young
(Easy with the tackle there--don’t release the bung),
And I sang a song like all the songs that I have ever sung
When the _Pegasus_ came sailing from the West.

No. 4. MR. JOHN MASEFIELD

THE POET IN THE BACK STREETS

[+AUTHOR’S NOTE.+--The following poem has been considerably compressed owing to the exigencies of space, which must sometimes be respected. But enough at least has been printed to indicate that it is a production of the School of Real Human Emotion that is leading a return to Life and Religion and Natural Action and away from the refined æstheticisms of so many of our modern poets.]