SECOND LIEUTENANT HORACE EDGAR KINGSMILL BRAY
ROYAL AIR FORCE
9TH JULY 1918 AGE 22
BURIED: SHOTWICK (ST MICHAEL) CHURCHYARD, CHESHIRE, UK
'Follow the gleam', this is a phrase that has passed out of usage; once upon a time everyone would have known what it meant. It comes from Tennyson's poem 'Merlin and the Gleam' where the gleam is a glimmer of the holy grail, that intangible quality that man should attempt to follow in his life:
Not of the sunlight,
Not of the moonlight,
Not of the starlight!
O young Mariner,
Down to the haven,
Call your companions,
Launch your vessel,
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow the Gleam.
This will have been the source of the inscription but it could have been a second-hand source. In 1920 Sallie Hume Douglas and Helen Hill composed a song for a YWCA - Young Women's Christian Association - competition. The song won and became a YMCA anthem, which is still sung today. Based on Tennyson's poem the song encourages young people to follow the gleam:
To knights in the days of old,
Keeping watch on the mountain height,
Came a vision of Holy Grail
And a voice through the waiting night.
“Follow, follow, follow the Gleam,
Banners unfurled o’er all the world;
Follow, follow, follow the Gleam
Of the chalice that is the Grail.
“And we who would serve the King,
And loyally Him obey,
In the consecrate silence know,
That the challenge still holds today:
“Follow, follow, follow the Gleam,
Standards of worth o’er all the earth,
Follow, follow, follow the Gleam,
Of the Light that shall bring the dawn.
Horace Edgar Kingsmill Bray enlisted in the Canadian Mounted Rifles in January 1915. He served in France and Belgium and then, having been wounded, transferred to the Royal Air Force. He finished his flying training and was just about to be sent to France when he had a head-on collision in the air and was killed.
His father, the Revd Horace E Bray chose his inscription. His mother had died when his sister was born. Bray's patriotic poetry was included in several Canadian anthologies.
This YouTube film, They Are Not Here, feature Bray's life and death.