Punch (102.1892)

74

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[February 13, 1892.

MR. PUNCH TO THE LIFEBOAT-MEN.

[The President of the Board of Trade has, by command of the Queen, conveyed, through the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, to the crews
of the lifeboats of Athertield, Brightstone, and Brooke, Her Majesty's warm appreciation of their gallant conduct in saving the crew and passengers
of the steamship Eider.]

YorjR hand, lad! "lis wet with the brine, When the winds and the waves and the rocks The soft-hearted shore-going critics of con-

and the salt spray has sodden your hair, ' make a chaos of danger and strife ; duct themselves would not dare,

And the face of you glisteneth pale with the And the need of the moment is pluck, and | The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they

the guerdon of valour is life.

stress of the struggle out there ;
But the savour of salt is as sweet to the sense

of a Briton, sometimes,
As the fragrance of wet mignonette, or the
scent of the bee-haunted limes.

That guerdon you've snatched from the teeth

of the thundering tiger-maw'd waves,
And the valour that smites is as naught, after
all, to the valour that saves.
Ay, sweeter is manhood, though rough, than They are safe on the shore, who had sunk in

Her heroes to get "on the cheap" from the

rough rank and file of her sons
Has been England's good fortune so long, that
season of shocks and alarms, devotion ! "We knew 'twas not true. the scribblers' swift tongue-babble runs

the smoothest effeminate charms the whirl of the floods but for you !

To the old sea-king strain in our blood in the And some said you had lost your old grit and

have not to share,
Claim much—oh so much, from rough man-
hood,—unflinching cool daring in fray,
And selflessness utter, from toilers with little
of praise, and less pay.