Forty years on, when afar and asunder, Parted are those who are singing to-day,When you look back and forgetfully wonder
What you were like in your work and your play, Then it may be there will often come o"er youGlimpses of notes like the catch of a song; Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along.
Follow up! Follow up !
Till the field ring again and again
With the tramp of the twenty-two men- Follow up ! Follow up!
Routs and discomfiture, rushes and rallies, Bases attempted and rescued and won,Strife without anger, and art without malice- How will it seem to you forty years on?
Then, you will say, not a feverish minute Strained the weak heart and the wavering kneeNever the battle raged hottest, but in it Neither the last nor the faintest were we.
Follow up! etc.
Oh, the great days in the distance enchanted,Days of fresh air in the rain and the sun; How we rejoiced as we struggled and panted,Hardly believable, forty years on!
How we discoursed of them, one with another Auguring triumph, or balancing fate,Loved the ally with the heart of a brother, Hated the foe with a playing at hate !
Follow up! etc.
Forty years on, growing older and older, Shorter in wind, as in memory long,Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,
What will it help you that once you were strong? God gives us bases to guard or beleaguer,Games to play out, whether earnest or fun, Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,Twenty and thirty and forty years on !
Follow up ! etc.
E. E. Bowen
Author.-E. E. Bowen, a master at Harrow School (Harrow-on-the-Hill, in Middlesex, England), wrote this as a school song. It is a very old and famous school which had as pupils, in the time of each, Colonel Burnaby (who rode to Khiva), Lord Byron, Cardinal Manning, Sheridan the drama- tist, Theodore Hook, Admiral Rodney, and many other notable men.
General.-Youth looks forward, age backward. What does Bowen saywe shall remember of our schools in forty years time? What he really urges is that now we shall do things that will by and by be pleasant memo- ries. To what games do routs, discomfitures, rushes, rallies, bases refer in Stanza two? What bases and goals are suggested in the last stanza?
