O bugles, ripple and shine

Ripple and rapture down the wavering line.

Praise! Praise! Praise!

For the last of the desperate days.

Shake out the lyrical notes

From your cavernous silvern throats:

Burst into joy-mad carols once again

To herald the homing men.

O bugles, tell it to the opening sky,

And go the roads of men with joyous cry.

Peace on the wreathed and the wreathless head

Peace over England, over Africa

Peace on the living, quiet on the dead—

Peace on the souls hurled downward from the day,

Hurled down with bated breath,

To join the old democracy of Death.

II.

The challenge of the bugle, and the glum
Rejoinder of the drum,

The neigh of startled stallions,

The hurried rhythm of the hot battalions,
The blown wild scent of crushed geranium,
The parley of the howitzers, the shrill
Grim colloquy of hill with hill—

These had their fateful hour. But now, even now,

A bird sings on a cannon-broken bough—

Sings all the afternoon,

And when the dark falls

On the shot-torn walls,

Frail wings will come to wander in the moon--
Wander in long delight

Through Africa's star-filled, delicious night.

III.

War's bitter root, and yet so fair a flower!
Sing, and be glad, O England, in this hour;
But not as one who has no grief to bear,
No memories, no burden, no despair.
Be glad, but not as one who has no grief:
The victor's laurel wears a wintry leaf.
The clarions revel and the joy-bells rave;
But what is all the glory and the gain
To those wet eyes behind the misty pane—
Whose Africa is crumpled to one grave,
A lone grave at the mercy of the rain?

No; not the stern averment of the guns,
Nor all our odes, nor all our orisons
Can sweeten these intolerable tears,

These silences that fall between the cheers.

In all the joy a memory cries and dwells,
A heart-break of heroical farewells.

IV.

Let there be no more battles: field and flood
Are sick of bright-shed blood.

Lay the sad swords asleep:

They have their fearful memories to keep.
These swords that in the dark of battle burned-
Burned upward with insufferable light—
Lay them asleep: heroic rest is earned.
And in their sleep will be a kinglier might
Than ever flowered upon the front of fight.

And fold the flags: they weary of the day,

Worn by their wild climb in the wind's wild way-Quiet the dauntless flags,

Grown strangely old upon the smoking crags..... Look, where they startle and leap!

Look, where they hollow and heap!

Tremulous, undulant banners, flared and thinned, Living and dying momently in the wind!

And war's imperious bugles, let them rest— Bugles that cried through whirlwind their behestWild bugles that held council in the sky,

They are aweary of the curdling cry

That tells men how to die.

And cannons worn out with their work of hell,
The brief abrupt persuasion of the shell-
Let the shrewd spider lock them one by one,
With filmy cables glancing in the sun;
And let the throstle, in their empty throats,
Build his safe nest and spill his rippling notes.

EDWIN MARKHAM: A BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH.

BY CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON.

Edwin Markham was born in Oregon City, Oregon, in 1852, on a day of presage for a poet-April 23d. His father was Samuel Markham, his mother Elizabeth Winchell Markham. The subject of our sketch is thus descended from two families known in American history almost since the beginning of things American: one representing Pennsylvania, and one New England. On his father's side he springs from Colonel William Markham, a first cousin of William Penn. Colonel Markham was Penn's secretary and acted as Governor during the absence of Penn. In 1691 he was made the first deputygovernor of Delaware, and later he became the associate of Lord Baltimore in important territorial matters. He was a stanch adherent of the Church of England, but like his Quaker cousin he believed in non-resistance and in the rights of the

masses.

The William Markham known in English history, and mentioned in Peppy's Diary, was another of this family line. He was a graduate of Christ's College, head master of Westminster (where his body lies), Bishop of Chester, and tutor of the Prince of Wales. His reach of mind and profundity of knowledge were renowned. He was a friend of Burke's, and helped him correct the "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," but quarreled with him over Warren Hastings, whose side Markham defended.

On his mother's side Edwin Markham represents the Winchells, who have a tradition of family descent reaching back to Robert Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1293. This family line was of English or Welsh origin; the name goes back to the continental Saxon, represented by the Win