"Those that have stayed at thy knees, Mother, go call

them in

We that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our kin.'

The Flowers

Buy my English posies!
Kent and Surrey May—
Violets of the Undercliff

Wet with Channel spray;
Cowslips from a Devon combe-
Midland furse afire-

Buy my English posies

And I'll sell your heart's desire!

B

UY my English posies!

You that scorn the May,

Won't you greet a friend from home
Half the world away?

Green against the draggled drift,

Faint and frail and first

Buy my Northern blood-root

And I'll know where you were nursed:

Robin down the logging-road whistles, "Come to me!" Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free;

All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain.

Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

Here's to match your need

Buy a tuft of royal heath,
Buy a bunch of weed

White as sand of Muysenberg
Spun before the gale-

Buy my heath and lilies

And I'll tell you whence you hail!

Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie— Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky

Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain

Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

You that will not turn—
Buy my hot-wood clematis,
Buy a frond o' fern

Gathered where the Erskine leaps

Down the road to Lorne—

Buy my Christmas creeper

And I'll say where you were born!

West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin-
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn—
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great
South Main-

Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

Here's your choice unsold!
Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom,
Buy the kowhai's gold
Flung for gift on Taupo's face,

Sign that spring is come—

Buy my clinging myrtle

And I'll give you back your home!

Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine-
Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine-
Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain-

Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

Ye that have your own

Buy them for a brother's sake
Overseas, alone.

Weed ye trample underfoot

Floods his heart abrim

Bird ye never heeded

Oh, she calls his dead to him!

Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas; Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!

Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land— Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand! Rudyard Kipling.

Britons beyond the Seas

OD made our bodies of all the dust

That is scattered about the world,

That we might wander in search of home
Wherever the seas are hurled:

But our hearts he hath made of English dust,

And mixed it with none beside,

That we might love with an endless love

The lands where our kings abide.

And tho' we weave on a hundred shores,
And spin on a thousand quays,

And tho' we are truant with all the winds,

And gipsy with all the seas,

We are touched to tears as the heart is touched

By the sound of an ancient tune

At the name of the Isle in the Western seas
With the rose on her breast of June.

And it's O for a glimpse of England

And the buds that her garden yields,

The delicate scent which her hedges wind,

And the shimmering green of her fields,
The roll of her downs and the lull of her streams,
And the grace of her dew-drenched lawns,
And the calm of her shores where the waters wash
Rose-tinged with her thousand dawns.

And it's O for a glimpse of London town,
Tho' it be through the fog and the rain,

The loud-thronged streets and the glittering shops,
The pageant of pomp and pain;

And it's O for a sight, tho' it be a dream

Of the Briton's beacon and pride

The cold grey Abbey which guards our ghosts
On Thames's sacred side.

But, lo, we have buried our fathers here,
And here we have reared our sons,
These are our Britons, and here the word
Of the British people runs;

Wherefore the while we call you Home,
And dream of your gentle shires,

We are rooted here by the smile of our babes
And the pilgrim dust of our sires.

Out of the grave our fathers reach
Dead hands to hold us here,
And never we open the earth with tears
But the land becomes more dear-
Sweet with memory, brave with love,
And proud with the hope ahead

That our sons shall be stronger, our homes more fair,
When we go down to the dead.

Loved, you are loved, O England,
And ever that love endures;