 | The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems |  |
“Who would not die for England!”
Thus He said,
Who at the holiest of all English hearths,
The holiest and the highest, had been given
A seat, an English Princess for his Bride,—
Now at that hearth weeping her widowed tears,
Bitter and barren as the winter rain.
“It is not meet that I, whom this famed Isle,
This generous, mighty, and majestic Land,
Ennobled as her son, should not repay
Her splendid gift of kinship. Let me go,
Go where they go, Her world-researching race,
That slumber pillowed on the half-drawn sword,
And wake at whisper of her will, to greet
Duty and Death that evermore were twin.”
Who at the holiest of all English hearths,
The holiest and the highest, had been given
A seat, an English Princess for his Bride,—
Now at that hearth weeping her widowed tears,
Bitter and barren as the winter rain.
“It is not meet that I, whom this famed Isle,
This generous, mighty, and majestic Land,
Ennobled as her son, should not repay
Her splendid gift of kinship. Let me go,
Go where they go, Her world-researching race,
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And wake at whisper of her will, to greet
Duty and Death that evermore were twin.”
| The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems | |