Laudator Temporis Acti

Francis Hastings Doyle (1810-1888), "The Private of the Buffs," The Return of the Guards and Other Poems (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883), pp. 95-96 (line numbers added):

"Some Seiks, and a private of the Buffs, having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning they were brought before the authorities, and commanded to perform the kotou. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head, and his body thrown on a dunghill." — See China Correspondent of the "Times."

Last night, among his fellow roughs,
    He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
    Who never looked before.
To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,        5
    He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,
    And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
    Bewildered, and alone,        10
A heart, with English instinct fraught,
    He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
    Bring cord, or axe, or flame:
He only knows, that not through him        15
    Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish¹ hop-fields round him seem'd,
    Like dreams, to come and go;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleam'd,
    One sheet of living snow;        20
The smoke, above his father's door,
    In gray soft eddyings hung:
Must he then watch it rise no more,
    Doom'd by himself, so young?

Yes, honour calls!—with strength like steel        25
    He put the vision by.
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
    An English lad must die.
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
    With knee to man unbent,        30
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
    To his red grave he went.

Vain, mightiest fleets of iron framed;
    Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untamed,        35
    The strong heart of her sons.
So, let his name through Europe ring—
    A man of mean estate,
Who died, as firm as Sparta's king,
    Because his soul was great.        40

¹ The Buffs, or East Kent Regiment.

J.P. Entract, "A Postscript to 'The Private of the Buffs'," Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research Vol. 41, No. 165 (March, 1963) 42-46 (at 45, bracketed material added):

Moyes was neither a "Kentish Man" nor a "Man of Kent" [cf. line 17] but a Scot. Although the connection of the regiment with Kent (for recruiting purposes) dates from 1782, there is no record of their being stationed in the county during Moyes's period of service. The depot at Canterbury was not established until the 1870s.

[....]

He was no "lad" [line 28] but a man of 32, with fifteen years' service and the Crimea medal, who had only recently lost the responsible rank of Colour-Serjeant. In this connection, it may be that the climate was beginning to take its toll, as it has done to many others in the "outposts of Empire."

Some additional notes:

Seiks = Sikhs

Line 6: Elgin = James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary in China and the Far East during the 2nd Opium War

Line 39: Sparta's king = Leonidas, who fell with the 300, fighting against the Persians at Thermopylae (480 BC)

Doyle's poem used to appear often in anthologies, e.g. in Henry Van Dyke, ed., Poetry: Idyls and Stories in Verse (Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1924 = The Pocket University, XI), pp. 284-285 — see also Asa Don Dickinson, "The Guide to Daily Reading," in The Guide to Reading (Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1925 = The Pocket University, XXIII), pp. 79-161 (at 153, under December 1). But it seems to have fallen out of favor today. William Robertson Smith Stott (1878-1939),
Private John Moyse, The 3rd (East Kent, The Buffs) Regiment of Foot,
refusing to kow-tow before the Tartar Mandarin Tsan-koo-lin-sin, 1860
(National Army Museum, Accession Number 2001-04-329-1)
That was then, this is now: