 | English Roses |  |
TO THE PREMIER.
Est Modus in Rebus.
To thee, grand Cecil, in the rush of thingsAround us and the tumult at our gate,
The shakings and the overshadowings,
We turn; to one who can with peril cope
In sure serenity of anchored hope,
Which finds occasions even in adverse fate
Commensurate with need. Thy larger look
Foresees beyond the bubbles of the times
With quantitative vision the full book
And far completed orb of change and chance,
Above the babble of brute circumstance,
And the one moment ethical that chimes
With the eternal truth beneath them all.
201
Schooled to the uses of wide statesmanship,
And quick to snatch from evils ere they fall
Advantage still, with staid consummate art
Of equal hand and no unequal heart
Sedate and fixed. And in these troubled years,
Which travail with insufferable fears,
When enemies are loud and some unseen;
Lo, thou dost bring a true proportioned mind
To meet the shock of battle, and between
The banded bars of hate to note the wind
Of vaster other currents, that will bear
Our vessel to the port where it would be;
Through storms that waft us forward, though they wear
An angry face, and buffets that make free.
The stumbling-blocks to thee are only stairs
Uplifting to a blue and better sky,
And big with rifts of opportunity.
There is a measure in all men's affairs,
Known unto him who needs not refuges
Of desperation, like the gambler's leap,
But steers a course of straight observances
With the ripe touch and educated glance.
Here is our strength, a bulwark broad and cheap,
Whereon the bases of this isle's romance
Rest, in the rocking of a hundred waves
And cruel weathers. England looks to thee.
Thou hast the philosophic eye to see
Horizons of the future, and in graves
The cradles of yet new adventures meet,
When this huge world will be one native street.
Thou hast the strong imperial arm to strike
And bless with sovereign Ministries alike,
Or reach across the kingdoms; and thy voice
Is law and light to dim and distant shores,
Where anarchy is the sole government,
And in its thunder music realms rejoice
Through all their heaving night incontinent
And yield to thee their faith and richer stores.
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And clothed with mercy like a royal dress,
A might more awful from its gentleness.
Thy will is deed and destiny. No gust
Of passion or an idle prejudice
Shall bid thee swerve a hairsbreadth from thy track
As foredecreed as duty, nor the wrack
Of toppling thrones or worlds of sacrifice
Doomed. Treaties come and go, a poor defence
Against an armed and hostile Europe. Thou
Art rooted in the rock of principles,
Which cannot veer and do not ever bow
Unto the backwash of blind outrun creeds,
Abiding in their own magnificence;
And at the tideways of great thoughts that roll
In the interpreting of higher needs,
For ever on by ordered miracles
Of services and fine intents that flower
And fruit in glory of a chastened power,
The earth to its inevitable goal.
| English Roses | |