The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

O shores and lakes and dells
Of England! asphodels
And lilies of the East are not so fair
As tender blossoms born
Beneath the breath of morn
Within your folds and nursed by Western air:
Nor are the Eastern maids
Crowned with the dim black braids
As sweet as flowing crowns of sun-kissed golden hair.

O England! cliffs and downs
And bustling fervent towns
And long grey shores and myriad-manéd sea,
And gardens, close, red-walled,
And mountains weird and bald
And white-plumed torrents tossing o'er the lea
And green sequestered nooks
And pebbly trout-loved brooks—
Give all your glory of soul, ye wild domains, to me!

Crown me not with a hand
Burnt red with sultry sand,
But with the clear palm of an English maid;
Stars that above us shine,
O'er mountain-ash and pine,
And fluctuant birch and tangled oak-tree's shade
And silvery mute stream,
Mix ye with my fond dream,—
And flowers that flush in spring the English mossy glade.

And English women fair,
Sweet for the Northern air,
Breathed as the English rose and white as high
Lilies that round us stand,
Stretch forth from all the land
Hands lily-white and fragrant ere I die,
And crown the English song
That sweeps in tide-flood strong
Across my eager heart and through my soul doth sigh.

Oh, never yet avail
Our songs that seek the pale
And sunburnt maidens of the Eastern land;

That leave the land of pines
For weak low-growing vines:
Never avail the feet that feebly stand
Upon our sounding shores:
Never avail the oars
That shun the dark-blue deep, that strike against the sand.

Grant me the perfect kiss
Of England,—give me this,
O time, O life, O death with down-bowed wings!
I ask this; nothing more:
One swift scent of the shore
That the blue endless English ocean rings
With ring of sweet white foam;
One rosebud from my home,
One flower whereto my hand in the death-grapple clings.

One rustling heather-bell,
One tuft of furze to smell,
One woman's mouth, dearer than rose, to kiss;
One vision, nothing more,
Of limitless wide shore;
One awful rush of music; only this:

One breath of the bright sky
Of England;—then I die
Content, clasped in a wild unfathomable bliss.

One wondrous London day,
To watch the torrent play,
The flood of life, along the murmuring shore
Of endless seething streets;
One with the heart that beats
In giant pulses through them evermore:
Then let the veil be rent
And let me pass content
The ever-rippling, waiting, yearning death-stream o'er.

Crowned with my own sweet land,
Her hand within my hand,
Her eyes upon my eyes, her tender gaze
Deeply intent on me,
And all her wind-sweet sea
Laughing as children laugh in primrose ways;
Thus would I pass,—nor fear
Lest in a new land drear
I pass beyond the reach of love and flowers and bays.

Where God is, children are,
And sweet love, and the star
Of labour and of hope,—and woman's tread;
Woman whose tender breath
Fills all the vales of death
Like the far miles of countless rose-scent shed
In the Caucasian vales:
Such death no spirit pales,
For where there lasts a rose, no death-pale soul is dead.

Where love is, death is not;
Yea, not o'er any spot
Where sweet love treads hath bitter death the power:
Not over England's seas,
Nor the immortal breeze,
Nor one white pure imperishable flower
Of English womanhood,
Nor one true bard who stood
True to his love and land through life's fast-flitting hour.

1880.