NOTE
Reading edition
At the end of the complete text will be found a shorter version based on the original draft of the poem. This is included for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire poem too long for declamation. I have tried to obviate a difficulty, without officiously exercising the ungrateful prerogatives of a literary executor, by falling back on a text which represents the author’s first scheme for a poem—never intended of course for recitation.
ROBERT ROSS
IN MEMORIAM C. T. W. Sometimes trooper of The Royal Horse Guards Obiit H.M. Prison Reading, Berkshire July 7th, 1896