TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS
"To veer, how vain! on, onward strain,
Brave barks! in light, in darkness too;
Through winds and tides one compass guides.
To that, and your own selves, be true.
But, O blithe breeze! and O great seas!
Though ne'er that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last.
One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where'er they fare.
O bounding breeze! O rushing seas!
At last, at last, unite them there."[1]
This is not mere longing; it is prophecy. So over these two, our old friends who are friends no more, we sorrow not as men without hope. It is only for those who seem to us to have lost compass and purpose, and to be driven helplessly on rocks and quicksands—whose lives are spent in the service of the world, the flesh, and the devil, for self alone, and not for their fellow-men, their country, or their God—that we must mourn and pray without sure hope and without light; trusting only that He, in whose hands they as well as we are, who has died for them as well as for us, who sees all His creatures
"With larger, other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all,"
will, in His own way and at His own time, lead them also home.
Another two years have passed, and it is again the end of the summer half-year at Rugby; in fact, the school has broken up. The fifth-form examinations were over last week, and upon them have followed the speeches and the sixth-form examinations for
[ 341 ]
