Flower o' the thorn :: :: University of Virginia Library

ENGLAND, when the sceptre passes from thy high unpaltering hold,
When thy puissance pales and ceases from the new worlds and the old,
May I not be there to see it, may I not be there to hear!
Drowned in darkness be my vision, shut in silence be mine ear!

I have loved thee, mighty Mother, since I grew to understand
What a glory is thy story, what a healer is thy hand,
What a shadeless splendour hovers o'er thy proud imperial head,
What a halo flames and flowers round the memories of thy dead;

Since I learned from song and story, from the book of days gone by,
How thy greatness grew and gathered, like the sunlight in the sky,
How thy bright far-flaming banner, to the winds of Heaven outblown,
Flew from ocean unto ocean, opening up the worlds unknown;

How, the fourfold climes o'erranging, sounding o'er the sevenfold seas,
East, South, North, thy war-cry carried Truth and Justice on the breeze,
How the subject-peoples prospered in thy bosom's fostering heat,
How the Peace Britannic followed on thy firm unfaltering feet.

Many an age the world in justice hast thou governed and in truth;
O'er the peoples, well contented with thy rule of right and ruth,
Many an age hast thou the sceptre swayed of empire: one in three
Of the grandchildren of Adam owns allegiance to thee.

Now thy majesty is menaced by a fierce and faithless foe,
Who by force and fraud unflinching many a nation hath laid low;
Many a people hath he strangled, Frank and Saxon, Gaul and Dane:
Now his blood-shot eyes are fastened on thine empery of the main.

Sad the day will be for Europe, sadder for the subject world,
When thy lions cease to ramp it, when thy rainbow flag is furled,
When the empery of the nations passes from the nations' friend,
From the frank free-hearted Briton to the sour sardonic Wend.

Yet, despite his strength and cunning, little cause there were to dread
This thy new rapacious foeman, if, as sovereign Shakspeare said,
To ourselves and thee, our mother, we thy children rest but true,
If the heart of England olden beat again in England new.

Race on race its battle-billows hath against thee hurled and foiled,
From the bulwarks of thy bravery inexpugnable recoiled:
None thy blow might bide, unbaffled, in the fierce earthshaking fight;
None in arms might stand, unstaggered, 'gainst thy calm unconquered might.

But, alas! within thy bosom bred a traitor-crew hath been,
That but spite and hatred cherish for their dam, the Ocean's Queen,
That, their paltry ends to compass and their greed and spleen to sate,
Would upon the rocks of ruin cast the carrack of the State.

These it is upon whose malice counts the fierce insidious foe,
Thine unvanquished arm to palsy in the coming battle-throe,
So, against thyself divided, thou to hate mayst fall a prey
And eternal darkness follow on thy fair imperial day.

On thy guard, then, mighty Mother! Let the traitor feel thine arm!
Cast the coward from thy councils! Make them helpless all for harm!
Else in vain thy true sons' valour and their fortitude will be
And thy name will sink for ever in the surges of Time's sea.

II.

But, (forefend it, God in Heaven!) calm unconquered Mother mine,
If the thing be true they tell us, that thy star is in decline,

That thou soon must pass and perish from thy place beneath the sun,
Leave thy heritage of honour to the Vandal and the Hun;

If it other than a phantom of the fell impuissant will,
Other than a fond intention be of those that wish thee ill,
If indeed it be foreordered that thy course is near its close
And that thou thy head unvanquished needs must vail unto thy foes,

Mayst thou not, as one by inches pineth, wait and waste away,
Till the hand of Time the moment mark for ending of thy day!
Face to foe, in open battle, as thou livedst, mayst thou die,
With the corpses of thy haters for thy catafalque heaped high!