'If' is the favourite poem of people who don't actually like poetry; the musical equivalent would be something like Bruch's Violin Concerto.

A headier mix from the same vintage as that idyllic lake isle, with its bee loud glade, is it not.

Well, dang me, is 'Casey at the Bat' (1889) where Henry Newbolt nicked the idea for the opening of Vitai Lampada (1897), a poem which must have been born an old Warhorse?


Vitai Lampada

There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight -
Ten to make and the match to win -
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of the ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote -
'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'
 
The sand of the Desert is sodden red -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; -
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel's dead,
And the regiment's blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'
 
This is the world that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'
 
Sir Henry Newbolt
 


"Pilfering another boy's prep, Newbolt Minor? Very poor form. Report to me in Upper Hall to have your nipple twisted."

Then we'd better throw Mr Henry Wadsworth Longfellow into the works too:


Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

[...]

Ugh.